Dear Mr. Haruni Machumu,

Online and onsite instruction support different kinds of

interactions between learners and content. One mode of

instruction may support cognitive or affective outcomes better than another. The online

instruction was geared toward providing personalized practice

and feedback opportunities for the students. For each unique

context, there may be some kinds of outcomes that are more

efficiently achieved online and others that are more effectively

achieved face to face.

I would recommend a book for more:

Josh Bersin (2004) The Blended Learning Book Best Practices, Proven Methodologies, and Lessons Learned. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

I hope I have been of some help.

Best

Andrija

Dear Andrija Kozina

The comments are considered and I though the recommended reference will help.

Thank you Haruni Machumu for your question. I think your question covers an important area, and it is my pleasure to share some light onto this area. The short answer to your question is achieving cognition or behavioral changes by using blended learning will depend on the objectives of the course and the design of the activities included in blended learning. You might aim at achieving both elements, and distributing these aims along with the tasks and social media you plan to use.

Blended learning is commonly used in middle- and low-income countries and aims at using a variety of media (including face-to-face learning, online, internet, radio, social media etc.), and learning environment (including teamwork, self-regulated learning, peer-to-peer learning) to achieve knowledge, cognition skills and possibly social and communication changes. Other behavioral changes have been also studied (not commonly examined but you need to search the literature).

A good example of cognition in using blended learning, is use of simulation or computer-aided learning programs designed with tasks that stimulate learner’s cognition such as identification of problems, generation of hypotheses, collection of information or generating an enquiry plan, weighing the evidence for and against a hypothesis, making decision on basis of available evidence etc. The research in this area might look at approaches used by learners, and time spend on each task and other detailed technical aspects that need to be researched by you.

The behavioral change by using blended learning may target communication skills across learners and between the learner and the instructor. There are different types of research design covering this area and approaches for measuring changes that you might need to explore.

Look at Thukral et al 2012; Dodani et al, 2012; Duhaney 2009; Aggarwal et al 2011; Valk et al, 2010. I advise you to search PubMed for more studies in these areas. I hope my answer provide a meaningful response to your query.

Dear Samy Azer

Thank you. I should make it clear that your answer enlighten my mind about the topic and thank you for you time and sharing