The effect of blended learning environment on 2-year vocational school students' engagement and academic achievement

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of blended learning environments on 2-year vocational school students? engagement and academic achievement. A quasi experimental design including pretest-posttest with control group was used in the analysis of engagement and academic achievement. A correlational analysis model was utilized to determine the effect of student engagement on academic achievement.This study was done on ?Internet Programming I? course, which takes part in 2-year Vocational Schools? 2011-2012 curriculum. The experimental group was consisted of 51 sophomore students attending Çankırı Karatekin University 2-year Vocational School of Çankırı Departmant of Computer Programming. The control group of 64 students, consisted of 38 sophomore students attending Amasya University 2-year Vocational School of Amasya Departmant of Computer Programming and 26 sophomore students attending Amasya University 2-year Vocational School of Merzifon Departmant of Computer Programming.The experimental group studied in the blended learning environment which was designed with using an open source online course management system and the control group studied in the face to face learning environment for seven weeks. At the beginning of the study, pretest, motivation, technological skills and attitude towards the course scales were implemented for testing the equivalence of groups. No statistically meaningful differences between two groups were detected for the measured variables at the beginnging of the study. After the treatment, student engagement and the academic achievements of the groups were compared using t-tests. The result showed that there is a meaningful statistical difference between experimental and control groups for the student?s engagement and academic achievement favoring the blended learning environment. Students in the blended learning environment had higher engagement and academic achievement scores than students? in the face-to-face learning environment. The results of the regression analysis which were used to investigate the relationship between student engagement and academic achievement in the blended learning environment showed no meaningful correlation. The study provides evidence that blended learning environments contributes student engagement and achievement in 2-year vocational schools.