Gender-Wise Perception of Students Towards Blended Learning in Higher Education: Pakistan

TL;DR

This study explores Pakistani students' perceptions of blended learning, highlighting positive impacts on academic experience and collaboration, while identifying infrastructural and support challenges in implementing BL effectively.

Contribution

It provides empirical insights into students' perceptions and challenges of blended learning in Pakistani higher education, emphasizing infrastructural and support needs.

Findings

Students are compatible with technology use in BL.

Technology positively impacts academic experience and peer collaboration.

Challenges include lack of support, training, and infrastructure.

Abstract

Blended learning (BL) is a recent tread among many options that can best fit learners' needs, regardless of time and place. This study aimed to discover students' perceptions of BL and the challenges faced by them while using technology. This quantitative study used data gathered from 300 students enrolled in four public universities in the Sindh province of Pakistan. the finding shows that students were compatible with the use of technology, and it has a positive effect on their academic experience. The study also showed that the use of technology encourages peer collaboration. The challenges found include: neither teacher support nor a training program was provided to the students for the course which needed to shift from a traditional face to face paradigm to a blended format, a lake of space lies with skills in a laboratory assistants for the courses with a blended format and as shortage of high tech computer laboratories / computer units to run these courses. Therefore, it is recommended that the authorities must develop and incorporate a comprehensive mechanism for the effective implementation of BL in the learning teaching-learning process heads of the departments should also provide additional computing infrastructure to their departments.