The investigations of students? interactions and learning levels at blended learning

The present study aimed at examining students? interactions and learning levels at blended learning in the course of Teaching Principles and Methods. In concurrence with this aim, it was determined how to be student-student, student-instructor, and student-content interactions and learning levels at blended learning and the process was examined in dept.The study was designed as participatory action research. The intervention was implemented in the course of Teaching Principles and Methods in Primary Education Department in the Faculty of Education at Anadolu University for 12 weeks during the fall semester of 2010-2011 academic year. A total of 30 students attending Social Studies Education Program participated in the study. The learning-teaching process of the course was designed as a blended course composed of four learning mediums, namely face to face class, synchronized online class, discussion forum and blog. During the intervention, online course activities in concurrence with Felder-Silverman Learning Style Model were realized with face to face class activities. Data were collected through various qualitative and quantitative sources as achievement test, activity selection form, video records of face to face course and online learning records, face to face course work sheets, questionnaires, interviews, self-evaluation, researcher journal, field notes, validity and reliability committee audio records.The findings obtained from data analysis revealed that the problems regarding to students? interactions at blended learning were much more related to students? participation, student-student interaction, and student-content interaction and these problems were solved in the process of action research. It was found also that students? participation to the online learning activities were increased during the intervention.The findings regarding how to be student-student interaction indicate that the interaction increased generally at the process of the intervention and that students interacted to other students through verifying, developing of others? opinions and responding to their questions. It was found that student-instructor interaction was quantitatively important since the beginning of the intervention for the synchronous activities and increased during the intervention for the asynchronous activities. In addition to this, it was revealed that student-instructor interaction was realized as the form of instructor questioning and students answering. It was found that student-content interaction increased generally during the intervention and that student-content interaction was realized as the contribution to the content through interaction ways such as sharing personnel opinion, academic knowledge, question, experience. It can be stated that the quality of students interactions increased based on the observations that interactions ways regarding the three interactions became varied.According to the results of the achievement test, it was revealed that students? learning was increased significantly. In addition, it was found that the learning levels of the students were much more at the level of comprehension and learning levels in cognitive domain increased during the process of the intervention. It was observed also that learning in affective domain increased during the intervention. Students? opinions supported the findings concerning students? interactions and learning. Moreover, according to students? opinions, it was found that other students attending to the course, instructor and course activities contributed to the students? learning and that learning was realized in concurrence with of the aims of Teaching Principles and Methods.Based on the findings of the research, it was determined that students faced with various problems regarding participation to online activities and interactions, and that problems were solved with functional decisions, student-student, student-instructor and student-content interactions, academic achievement and learning levels were increased during the intervention and also while the participation to activities was increased, the interactions were increased. As a result, it can be stated that blended learning implemented in this study might have the effects on the improvement of students? interactions and learning levels.Keywords: Blended learning, student-student interaction, student-instructor interaction, student-content interaction, learning style