STUDENT USE OF ONLINE RESOURCES AS A FUNCTION OF INTEGRATION INTO COURSE ASSIGNMENTS: A COMPARATIVE STUDY

Ilias Karasavvidis, Department of Preschool Education, University of Thessaly, Greece

The great promise of blended learning lies in its potential to combine the best of both traditional and online practices through the provision of information and communication resources. While in theory the contribution of such resources to learning can be substantial, research tends to suggest that the provision of online resources does not necessarily lead to their actual use by students. Moreover, it appears that even when students do use such resources they do not always employ appropriate learning strategies. Thus, an important challenge for blended learning is to ensure the productive use of online resources provided. The present paper focuses on how the use of online learning resources by students varies as a function of how instrumental the resources are for the course assignments. 147 students who attended two blended learning courses participated in the two conditions of the study. In one of the conditions the online learning resources provided were instrumental for the completion of assignments while the reverse was the case in the other condition. The use of online resources was determined through log file analysis. The comparative examination suggested that when the learning resources were essential for the course assignments students tended to use them more systematically. The paper is concluded with a discussion of the findings and the implications for the design of blended learning practices.