NAMAL WICKRAMASEKERA (UNIVERSITY OF COLOMBO)

THE EFFECT OF BLENDED LEARNING ON ACADEMIC WRITING SKILLS AMONG UNDERGRADUATES : DIGITAL LITERACIES/LANGUAGE LEARNING AND TECHNOLOGY

Blended learning is considered a combination of traditional face-to-face instruction with technology-mediated instruction or online learning. It has become the face of the future and has been viewed as the new education model, though it has existed for a long time. The COVID-19 pandemic made it the mainstream of education, and in Sri Lanka, after controlling the pandemic, academic work for undergraduates continued online because of the economic and political crisis. This mixed-method quasi-experimental research with quantitative and qualitative data was conducted to discover the effect of blended learning approaches on improving academic writing skills among undergraduates. Using five instruments, the researcher compared the impact of blended learning on academic writing skills with traditional, face-to-face instructional methods in the experimental and control groups. The independent variable represents the teaching methods, face-to-face and blended learning, and the dependent variable represents academic writing. In this research, the conceptual framework provides a structured approach to investigate the impact of blended learning in academic writing while drawing on the strengths of the Community of Inquiry Framework, Input Hypothesis, and Genre Based Approach. Results showed a significant difference in the mean scores of the control group (traditional teaching mode) and the experimental group (blended learning) in favour of the experimental group. The findings also indicated that more face-to-face sessions would be conducted since 75% of the content was delivered via the Learning Management System in the present course. The researcher recommends blended learning with more face-to-face sessions.

W. Namal M. Wickramasekera is a Senior Lecturer in English Language Teaching at the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka. The research interests are Teaching English for Academic Purposes, Curriculum Development/ Syllabus design for English as a Second Language, and online teaching and learning/ Blended learning.