The impact on students of online and blended learning methods

This paper will draw upon two projects which consider the impact of different types of blended learning activities on student experience. One project takes two final year law modules and transforms parts of them into online, digitally-enhanced sessions using Blackboard Collaborate and other e-tivity methods. One module took a 6-week section of the content and enhanced face-to-face sessions with online sessions, and the other took discrete weeks and ran synchronous online sessions using Blackboard Collaborate. This project will analyse the levels of student engagement and satisfaction with these methods, compared to traditional classroom based delivery. It will also assess, as far as is practicable, the impact that this digital transformation has on different equality characteristics. The second project looks at a subject-wide innovation in 2015, whereby all the timetabled activities for one week were replaced with blended and online activities. The important difference of this second project is that the research is being designed and carried out by an undergraduate law student. The student researcher will also seek feedback from students on the blended learning activities in project one and this paper will investigate the extent to which students give different responses to another student to those they gave to the tutors. The results of both projects will feed forward into the development of a fully blended delivery of law programmes that are enabling for our students while valuing diversity.