Using blended learning in a university-level environment

Abstract

This thesis investigates how teaching methods within blended learning can be applied to a university-level introductory programming course at Chalmers University. The course in question is planned to be renewed, and its administrators are contemplating whether implementing blended learning could help in teaching programming. Therefore, the purpose of this thesis is to explore what blended learning-based resources could provide value for the course from a technological point of view. The two models that this thesis will explore more in-depth are mastery-based learning and flipped classroom. How to best implement these two models into the presented setting will be the main focus when presenting the technology-based resources developed for the target course. The resources that were developed comprise of a course structure with modules and quizzes, and an administrative application for teachers. Both these resources were developed to support the blended learning practices and to work well in the target course setting. The results and conclusions are supported by the literature around blended learning. However, due to the lack of ability to test the results, it is hard to determine how the developed resources would perform in practice. To determine this, they need to be tested in action over the run of the course and evaluated on how they performed.