Considering all the different aspects of blended learning, we can see that improved flexibility – both in timetables and physical attendance – can be seen as one of the greatest benefits of this course. The students appreci-ated the opportunity to take the weekly online exams whenever they could fit them in their schedules. To have three smaller exams instead of one larger literature exam was also seen as a benefit. From the teacher’s point of view, the online learning unit made it possible to have weekly tests for over 50 students, because the online exams were scored automatically by Blackboard. The main challenge of the online exams was, however, to find the right degree of difficulty for the multiple-choice questions. The questions should be difficult enough to encourage thorough reading of the literature, but easy enough to reward the students for their efforts. On this course the students claimed that some of the questions were too difficult.
This feedback should be taken into account in the following years.
According to the feedback, many students also appreciated the diversity of the face-to-face and online elements of the course. These students felt that mixing different learning methods was invigorating and motivating. On the other hand, some students thought that the course structure was too fragmented; they felt it was difficult to piece together a general view of the subject.
When comparing the earlier in-class courses and the current blended learning course, we noticed that the quality of the group work became more varied. Among the 14 groups, there were both some very strong and some weaker groups. Some of the groups did extremely good work and they had evidently spent much more time on the assignments than what we had scheduled for the work in the earlier in-class courses. On the other hand, some of the groups had apparently taken the easy way out and had put very little time and effort into the work. In their feedback, a few students mentioned that some group member’s indolence had
72 turbed the group work; therefore, these students would have preferred doing group work in class. In those groups that had been functioning well there had been lively discussions between the group members, and the students had clearly realised new points of view by listening to the argu-mentations of their peers.
One further challenge seems to have been to find a common time for the group meetings. We did not provide class time as such for group meet-ings, but we had pointed out and suggested certain hours in the weekly timetable for the groups to meet. Besides face-to-face meetings, the groups could also meet online in chat; yet, some groups had found it ex-tremely hard to find time for group work, and thus some groups had ended up doing their work by using email. However, none of the groups failed to submit the group work assignments in time. Here, we should most likely be obliged to Blackboard and its ‘strict’ deadlines. When the students know that the system does not accept submissions after certain dead-lines, they seem to be more timely in completing their tasks. However, in the future, it will be worthwhile to try to find different ways to support the groups either online or in-class.
One possible way to enhance the blendedness of the course is to make the students complete the group work – or at least some of them – online.
If the students are forced to write their comments in Blackboard, they may be more inclined to participate and it would be easier to control students’
activity. Writing down the arguments might also improve their quality: re-search in the domain of cognitive skills has revealed that usually more complex thinking is used after some thinking and with little or no time con-straint whereas strict time-limits and responses produced with little prior thought lower the complexity (Baker-Brown et al., 1992). Doing group work in the Web would also improve the integration of different types of learning: teamwork and web-based learning. It would also increase flexi-bility since students don’t have to arrange face-to-face meetings.
As a conclusion, blended learning has proved to be a workable method to teach forest sector ethics and corporate sustainability. However, as in teaching in general, there is always room for improvement. In the future,
73 our main challenge will be to find new ways to facilitate group work – ei-ther face-to-face or online. “Blending” is a continuous activity.
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