Language Faculty’s Experiences And Perceptions Of Teaching Blended Learning Courses

With the development of Internet, our learning and living styles have greatly changed. The traditional teaching and learning style is also being challenged by the web technologies and multi-media technologies. As a result, a new teaching and learning style called Blended Learning, which takes the advantage of traditional learning and E-learning (quoted from Li Xianghong,2006), is put forward by many universities at home and abroad. This study aims to do researches into language faculty’s perceptions of teaching Blended Learning courses, studying language faculty’s attitudes to teaching Blended Learning language courses, barriers of teaching Blended Learning language courses, as well as the possible solutions to the barriers. It is a descriptive qualitative study. The main tools used in this study are interviews and observation.This study finds out that language faculty have different attitudes to teaching E-learning and Blended Learning courses. Some of them are willing to the new teaching modes and they are positive about the teaching effects, while some are negative and passive to teach Blended Learning courses. Yet, the results imply that future involvement into E-learning and Blended Learning would go on increasing. The study also finds out that there are roughly six kinds of barriers in the teaching:(1) technological issues;(2) greater time commitment;(3) learners’target language proficiency and information literacy;(4) learners’ autonomy;(5) lack of supervision of the learning process;(6) lack of face-to-face communication. The above barriers are the root of the concerns of the quality of Blended Learning courses. Among the barriers mentioned above, Number (3) and (6) are particularly big barriers to teaching Blended Learning language courses. Some solutions are available to break down those barriers, including (1) developing new learning materials and designing new assignments;(2) creating more opportunities both for online meetings and face-to-face meetings;(3) making adjustments in instruction strategies;4) integrating social software with the existed learning platform.Based on the research results and discussion, there are some implications for both the language faculty and school administration. For the language faculty, it is important for them to shift its role from authority in the traditional class to the assistant and facilitator in the Blended Learning courses. It is also important for the language faculty to make adjustments in instruction strategies and cultivate learners’ autonomy. The barriers reported in the research are mostly superficial and emotional, while the true barrier to teaching Blended Learning courses may be the deep integration of teachers’ technological, pedagogical and content knowledge. For this reason, the school administration should provide more instructions supporting an understanding of technology within the context of pedagogy and content rather than an isolated set of skills or knowledge. It is also expected that engineers would keep improving and perfecting the learning platform, and design more functions to meet the needs of different courses. In addition, voices of the academic teachers are expected to be heard of, and more researches on the type of courses which are suitable for Blended Learning deserve to be carried out.