Zusammenfassung:
The term Blended Learning has been used to describe a mix of online and onsite learning. Traditionally, the literature has focused on how this affects students without providing a clear definition. By addressing this subject as Blended Teaching, we would like to change the focus to the topic of teaching and those who teach. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, when higher education institutions (HEIs) in Switzerland moved their courses online quasi-overnight, faculty members have faced a mix of teaching modalities and practices to ensure that students obtain and retain the competencies in their subject matters. We will examine teaching in this new environment. During the pandemic, faculty members made tough decisions on how to teach their traditional courses in an online setting, which involved selecting more autonomous activities completed through new or untested technological tools. Some faculty members had already used technology and were quite open to using it more online. Other faculty members had to start from scratch or were obliged to attend training sessions to learn more about the practical use and pedagogical advantages of the digital tools they were implementing. Faculty members also had to adapt to new security and ethical issues to ensure that the students created the work being submitted or to guarantee a secure manner to assess course material. HEIs attempted to aid faculty members by imposing specific hardware, technological solutions, or software such as video conferencing tools. As the weeks (and semesters) continued, faculty members had more freedom to choose their tools, looking for solutions and allowing for more interaction and collaboration. Thus, they explored the most effective tools for their courses, which were lacking during the pandemic. In fact, it is only now, after the pandemic, that faculty members have the time to consider the pedagogical effects of the tools they implement and the effects of the blend of traditional teaching with digital tools they have done. This study addresses the following: RQ 1: How can faculty members create courses with authentic Blended Teaching practices? RQ 2: What challenges do faculty members face in Blended Teaching environments? To examine this topic, the researchers surveyed faculty members from three business schools in Switzerland. Faculty members were encouraged to share their experiences with blended teaching. They also described how this teaching differed from traditional teaching and what they needed to improve this experience for themselves and their students. Based on early results, the output could be better. Despite the potential for making fundamental changes to their pedagogy, many faculty members returned to the traditional classroom, using technology the same way they did before the pandemic. Some are (still) not enthusiastic about implementing authentic digital tools in their classrooms. Moreover, some institutions have banned distance learning courses to bring teachers and students back into the classroom, which is apparently the only place to truly learn, a rather simple view post-pandemic. The novelty of this study resides in the focus on teachers and their perspectives on blending teaching in their classrooms. It is a new phenomenon to blend the teaching rather than simply blending the learning. We intend to create a schema to help faculty members decide how to blend their teaching practices and, subsequently, improve the quality of their teaching.
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