This document summarizes a case study on the effectiveness of a blended learning model in a first-year composition course at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. The study found that the blended model helped most students succeed, with 11 of 16 survey respondents indicating it contributed to their success. Student grades were categorized into four groups: improvement, significant improvement, no improvement, and regression. The majority of students (11) showed improvement or significant improvement in their grades after struggling initially, suggesting the blended model benefited students at this open-admission institution. Regular online and in-person attendance was linked to student success.

1. A Perfect Match: Blended
Learning and Student
Engagement
A Case Study on the Importance of Student Engagment
in a Blended, First-Year Composition Class

2. A Perfect Match…
Background
Kwantlen Polytechnic Institution is…
• Open admission*
• Teaching intensive
• Actively recruiting international students**
*Students are accepted based on completion of a high-school diploma, GED, or mature-student status, as opposed to being
accepted based on academic achievement. Students attending open-admission institutions are sometimes unprepared for the
rigour of university study, as opposed to students attending selective-entry institutions.
**BC Ministry of Advanced Education has made international recruitment part of mandate for post-secondary institutions, which
compounds the issue of catering to students perhaps unprepared for the rigour of university in courses such as Academic Writing,
where communication in English is essential.

3. A Perfect Match…
Background
Focus of case study is ENGL 1100…
• a first-year composition course
• required by most degree programs in the
institution
• articulated with all equivalent composition
courses in BC, which also tend to be required
courses

4. A Perfect Match
Issues…
• ENGL 1100 often seen as a “problem course”
• Required course = learners often reluctant
• Appropriate placement (a variety of prerequisites = lack of consistency)
• Failure rate usually 30-40% (failure = below 60% or “C”)
• Many students retake course (sometimes two and three times)
• Active recruitment of international students compounds challenge
(particularly in a course where communication in English is essential)
• Can create a bottleneck for students (4th-year students still taking 1st
year requirements)

5. A Perfect Match
Previous Research….
Informal Research:
• Surveys administered over several years indicate students
find the blended environment more engaging than either
fully face-to-face or fully online courses.
Formal research:
• Results of an action research study surveyed successful
students from four sections of ENGL 1100 indicated 91.5%
of surveyed students believed the blended environment
contributed to their success in the course

6. A Perfect Match
Two Central Reasons for failure in ENGL
1100:
• Inappropriate placement (students
do not have language skills
appropriate for university-level writing)
• Students simply do not submit
assignments

7. A Perfect Match
Student reluctance to enroll in blended
courses..
• Because KPU offers so few courses in
blended format that students are unfamiliar
with learning environment;
• Courses are labeled “partially online” and
institutional research reports KPU students
tend to avoid any course with “online”
label;
• Negative experience with high school
online courses, which are self-paced.

8. A Perfect Match
Subject of case study was an
ENGL 1100 course not
labeled “partially online”;
Student expectation would
have been for a fully face-to-
face class.

9. RESEARCH QUESTION
To what extent can a blended
environment help students typical of
open-admission universities succeed in
a required, first-year composition
course?

10. Methodological Approach
Mixed Methods study employing Case
Study/Action Research approach:
• 16 students responded to a nine-question survey
• Attendance patterns for face-to-face classes (both
optional and mandatory) collected
• Online activity reports collected
• Student success rates collected and collated.

11. A Perfect Match
This case study was a second iteration of
an Action Research project completed
in June, 2013.
The focus of this iteration was a specific
group of students in one anomalous
section of the course over a fourteen-week
semester.

12. A Perfect Match
Regular classes at KPU meet twice a week
for eighty minutes; blended classes meet
once a week for eighty minutes.
Students in this section were offered the
following choice: they could learn the
material online or they could attend an
optional face-to-face class each week
where they would be taught the same
material in a classroom.

13. A Perfect Match
In other words, students had
access to a fully blended course,
but had the option of attending
additional face-to-face classes
to review material offered online.

14. A Perfect Match
Student attendance patterns were
observed in both the optional and
mandatory classes over a fourteen-week
semester.
Initial enrolment was 23, but 6 withdrew
over the course of the semester, so
enrollment dropped to seventeen
students.

15. ATTENDANCE PATTTERNS FOR OPTIONAL AND
MANDATORY FACE-TO-FACE CLASSES
• 10 (of 23 original) students attended
the first three optional classes;
• Attendance of the optional class
dropped off sharply after week 3 as
students became more confident with
the online portion of the class;
• Attendance for the optional classes
was 2 or 3 students each week.

16. Student Survey Responses
(administered in week ten)
Of 16 students who responded, half indicated
that they would not have enrolled had they
known the course was blended.
All 16 responded that they were now
comfortable with the blended format.
The sharp drop-off of attendance in week four
indicates that their comfort with the format
occurred early in the semester.

17. Student Survey Responses
12/16 indicated they now preferred the
blended format over fully face-to-face
delivery;
11/16 indicated that the blended
environment was helping them
succeed in the course.

18. Student Survey Responses
Most student responses indicated the blended environment was positive
in terms of the values of…
• Routine
• Organization
• Repetition
• Control
• Flexibility
• Convenience
• Access to faculty
• Engagement
• Enlightenment

19. Student Survey Responses
Negative responses to the blended
environment related to…
• Motivation problems
• “too much reading”
• One second-language student
suggested that more in-class time is
helpful for ESL students

20. A Perfect Match
Final Student Grades

21. A/B: EXCELLENT/GOOD: 6 STUDENTS
• All attended every mandatory class;
• 5/6 viewed online lessons, most several times
• 1/6 viewed online lessons sporadically for the first
half of the semester, but consistently in last half (as
concepts became more challenging)
• For first writing assignment, 6/6 received
“satisfactory,” “good,” or “excellent” grades
(C+/B/B+/A-)

22. C/C+: SATISFACTORY: 5 STUDENTS
4/5 attended every mandatory class
5/5 viewed every online lesson, most
several times
Significantly, though all 5 students
ultimately succeeded in the course,
each received “unsatisfactory” and
“failing” grades (C-/D/F) on their first
writing assignment

23. C-/D: UNSATISFACTORY: 2 STUDENTS
• 1 /2 attended all mandatory classes
and viewed all online lessons
• 1 /2 missed 3 weeks of mandatory
face-to-face classes, but viewed all
online lessons.

24. F: FAILURE: 4 STUDENTS
• 4/4 missed between 3 and 5 weeks of
mandatory face-to-face classes
• 3 /4 viewed all online lessons
• 1 /3 viewed less than thirty percent of
online material

25. A Perfect Match
STUDENT RESULTS
CATEGORIZED BY
IMPROVEMENT

26. A Perfect Match
Category One: Improvement
Category Student 1st
Grade
Online
Attendance
F2F Final Grade
One: 1 A- all all A
Improvement 2 C+ all all A-
3 B+ all all B+
4 B 8/14 all B+
5 C+ all all B
6 B all all B

27. A Perfect Match
Category One students: Improvement
• achieved satisfactory to excellent
grades on their first assignment, but
likely would have succeeded in any
learning environment—blended,
online, or face-to-face.
• These 6 students are perhaps less
typical of open-access institutions.

28. A Perfect Match
Category Two: Significant Improvement
Category Student First Grade Online F2F Final Grade
Two: 7 F all all C+
Most 8 C- all all C+
Significant 9 D all all C
Improvement 10 D all all C
11 D all 13/14 C
12 D all all C

29. A Perfect Match
Category Two students exhibited the most significant
improvement:
• These improvements are significant not because
the increase in grades is necessarily great, but
because the students shifted from failing and
unsatisfactory grades to (mostly) satisfactory
grades.
• of the 6 students who fall into this category, 5
achieved a grade of “C” (60%) or better (the grade
required to move on to the next level course).
• The one who did not achieve the required “C,” did
manage to improve his/her grade from “D” to “C-“
(within reaching distance of “satisfactory”).

30. A Perfect Match
Category Three: No Improvement
Category Student First Grade Online F2F Final
Grade
Three:
No
Improvement
13 F All 11/14 (missed 2
Peer reviews)
F
14 F All 10/14 (missed 1
peer review)
F

31. A Perfect Match
Category Three students exhibited no
improvement:
2 students in this category failed their first
writing assignment and ultimately failed
the course as well
Both students viewed all the online
lectures, but both missed three to four
weeks of face-to-face classes and
peer-review workshops

32. A Perfect Match
Category Three, continued…
• While their failing grade in the first
assignment may indicate that the
students simply did not have the basic
skills necessary to pass the course, one
student in Category Two (who
attended all online and face-to-face
portions of the class) also failed the
initial assignment, yet ultimately
achieved a grade of “C+.”

33. A Perfect Match
Category Four: Regression
Category Student First
Grade
Online V2F Final
Grade
Regression 15 C all 11/14 (missed 1
peer review)
C-
16 B- 4/14 9/14 (missed 1
peer review)
F
17 C all 11/14 F

34. A Perfe;ct Match
Category Four: Significant lack of improvement:
• The 3 students in this category achieved
“satisfactory” or “good” (C/B-) grades on their first
writing assignment indicating that they possessed
the essential skills for passing the course.
• Ultimately, however, each of these students
received unsatisfactory or failing grades (C-/F).
• Significantly, these students missed between three
and five weeks of face-to-face classes and
workshops, and one missed a great deal of the
online portion of the class as well.

35. A Perfect Match
• The eleven students in Categories Two, Three,
and Four reflect characteristics perhaps more
typical of first-year students in open-admission
institutions—students who may not be
prepared for the rigour of university studies.
• The attendance patterns and results of these
eleven students indicate the essential
importance of both portions of the blended
course—the “knowledge” and “the
knowing”…the fullness of “the generative
dance” (Cook and Brown, 1999).

36. Conclusions
• The results of this research suggest that
because of its emphasis on reading and
writing, a blended learning environment—“the
thoughtful integration of face-to-face and
online learning (Mathios, 2011)—may help
students in writing courses achieve success.
• Of greater importance, the results seem to
indicate that the success is most evident with
students who fully engage with the blended
learning environment, but who may be
struggling, unprepared, or under-prepared
(students more typical of open-admission, as
opposed to selective-admission, institutions).

37. Implications
• The implications of this finding may be
of interest to KPU and other open-access
institutions since a central
concern must invariably be helping
(frequently under-prepared) students
succeed at the post-secondary level.

38. A Perfect Match
While the student survey responses for this case
study do not endorse the blended learning
environment as a central contributor to their
learning as overwhelmingly as the students in the
earlier iteration of this study, the majority did
endorse the blended environment as helping
them learn.
In spite of some of KPU’s institutional research which
suggest that students will not take blended
courses (KPU, 2010), the students indicated a clear
desire to take future classes in a blended format.
Responses were more positive than expected,
especially considering that they had enrolled in a
course they expected to be conducted in a fully
face-to-face format.

39. A Perfect Match
A further conclusion is that students quickly
accept the blended format as equal to a
fully face-to-face environment, and value
not repetition of online material, but rather,
different—“value-added”—material in the
classroom.
This is supported by the fact that the one
optional class in ENGL 1100 which was of a
“value-added” nature (individual
consultations) experienced a spike in
attendance.

40. A Perfect Match
Please send me an e-mail if
you have any questions, or
wish to read the entire
study:
sheila.hancock@kpu.ca

41. References
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