THE EFFECTIVENESS OF BLENDED LEARNING IN ENGLISH TEACHER TRAINING

Abstract

This research paper presents a study that was carried out with future teachers of foreign languages from three different departments of Vinnytsia Mykhailo Kotsiubynskyi State Pedagogical University, Ukraine. The pandemic has had an impact on teaching. The education sector reacted quickly to this situation and implemented e-learning in institutional facilities. The course “Digital technologies in foreign languages teaching: theories, methods, application”, which is the subject of the study presented here, was implemented. In the conception of blended learning, the course provides future teachers with the necessary skills for the teaching practice of digital tools by learning to use these technologies in a didactically sensible way. The course concept provides a hybrid learning arrangement in which the effectiveness and flexibility of e-forms of learning are combined with the social aspects of face-to-face communication. The purpose of the study was to identify the effectiveness of the integration of digital technologies in the process of learning foreign languages, the benefits of digital teaching and changes in the level of digital literacy of students. In addition, the influence of individual digital competencies, personal life situations and previous experience with similar types of courses were analyzed in terms of the effectiveness and acceptance of the Blended learning concept. The course lasted half a year; 120 students chose it. The participants are students of foreign language (English) of the three cooperating departments (Department of Methods of teaching foreign languages, Department of English Philology, Department of Translation and multicultural communication). The potential of communication technologies and teachers’ digital competence is highlighted. The research design is based on the triangulation of quantitative and qualitative methods. The results of the survey of 120 respondents from three groups revealed, firstly, the level of their motivation to register for the course; secondly, the level of their educational success, taking into account the acquired professional and digital competencies; thirdly, the level of difficulty of their cooperation in the digital based communication.