On Friday December 16th, 2016, dr. Nynke Bos defended her dissertation or doctor thesis called Effectiveness of Blended Learning: Factors Facilitating Effective Behavior in a Blended Learning Environment. The aim of her research was to determine which factors either facilitate or hinder effective learning for students as they interact in a hybrid or blended learning environment.
When considering the instructional conditions of the course by comparing previous course offerings with a specific aim at recorded lectures, the results of the research are inconclusive. For recorded lectures there exists a negative relationship between lecture attendance and the use of recorded lectures. When considering self-regulation, there is no significant differences in course performance between self-regulated learners and students which are less capable of self-regulating their learning.
It seems that current blended learning applications have a focus on enhancing teaching, not on learning. In order to design more effective blended learning, greater attention need be paid to ways to support and elicit self-regulated learning. The dissertation can be downloaded here: http://drblend.org/pdf/
These findings of this research are consist with findings in literature studies. For example, a recent review study shows that lecturers recognize the benefits of lecture recordings for students and themselves, but also perceive several potential disadvantages, such as its negative effect on attendance and engagement, and restricting the style and structure of lectures (O’Callaghan et al., 2017).