Evaluating user experience of blended learning module: a case study of a private higher institution

• Main Author: Jivindra Kalaichelven, Mr.
• Format: text::Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 2023
• Subjects: User experience of blended learning module

Blended Learning (BL) has been widely adopted in higher education. This innovative delivery method is crucial to improve students’ engagement at the postgraduate level. University Tenaga Nasional (UNITEN) is one of the Higher Education Institutions (HEI’s) which adopts the BL approach at the postgraduate level. Previous studies have examined the BL implementation at UNITEN. However, those studies were not focused on students’ experience with BL modules, particularly at the postgraduate level. Therefore, this research examines the User Experience (UX) of the UNITEN postgraduate BL module from the lens of the UX framework. The Research Methodology (RM) course was chosen as it is a compulsory course at the postgraduate level. A quantitative survey was conducted using six dimensions of the User Experience Questionnaire (UEQ) which are attractiveness, perspicuity, efficiency, dependability, stimulation, and novelty to evaluate the UX. A total of 110 students participated in the UEQ survey. The data was analysed based on mean, variance, and confidence interval. The result from the survey shows that the attractiveness variable received the highest mean score, which is 1.835, and the least is the novelty which means the score is 1.036. The pragmatic quality (efficiency, perspicuity, dependability) scores higher than the hedonic quality (stimulation, novelty). This confirms that the RM BL module is more task-oriented. A semi-structured interview was later carried out as part of a qualitative approach to understand other aspects of pragmatic and hedonic from students’ experience of using this module. A total of six students took part in the interview. The thematic analysis was used to analyze the outcome of the interview. Thematic analysis analysed that, there are two themes of pragmatic which are understandable and informative while three themes of hedonic which are motivating, progress visibility, and navigation. These qualitative findings add further understanding of both pragmatic and hedonic were not addressed in the quantitative study. This study however is limited to only one selected BL RM module. Future studies may examine other postgraduate courses using different UX frameworks by increasing the number of participants for both quantitative and qualitative approaches.