Developing and Evaluating Blended Learning Environments in English Courses Based on Quality Matters Standards

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has offered an extraordinary opportunity to improve educational provision and consider alternatives to traditional teaching and learning. It has stimulated wide engagement in improving and evaluating educational practices. Bahrain Polytechnic moved to remote delivery during the pandemic, during which it also embraced piloting the quality matters (QM) standards of online teaching to ensure the suitability and quality of blended learning course content, assessment, and consequently delivery. The English team developed courses over three semesters to ensure robust online content was checked against the eight QM standards. The teaching and learning materials were redesigned to conform to the new online/blended delivery mode, including creating discipline-specific, contextualized content and assessments. The findings showcase staff and students' perceptions, which were gathered throughout the process to facilitate the application of best practices.