Teaching Undergraduate Course: Blended Instruction Versus Traditional Instruction

The comparison of blended instruction and traditional instruction is very rare in Africa and for that matter Ghana. This study examines students’ views on blended instruction mode as well as the comparison of the blended instruction mode and the traditional mode of instruction in terms of performance. This study adopted descriptive survey design. Purposive sampling was employed in selecting two different groups (Group A and Group B) of level 200 students who took Fundamentals of Computer Programming course in the Mathematics Education Department of the University of Education, Winneba. Sample size calculator was used to determine the sample size of 123 and 112 for Group A and Group B respectively with 5% margin of error, 95% confidence level and 50% response distribution. In order to avoid unbiased comparison between Group A and Group B in students' performance, Statistical Product and Service Solutions (SPSS) originally called Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 16 was used to randomly select the sample size of 123 and 112 from the final semester results of the 2 groups. In addition, fifty-six (56) students were purposively selected from Group B to seek their views on the blended instruction. The instruments used in data collection were test and questionnaire. The questionnaire items had Cronbach Alpha value of .73. Data were analysed quantitatively using descriptive and inferential statistics. On students' view on blended instruction, the highest mean score of 4.27 corresponds to face-to-face meeting. The next four rating starting with the one with the highest mean score are Assessment (mean = 3.98), Content (mean = 3.68), Blended instruction in general (mean = 3.57) and Ease of use of Moodle (mean = 2.72) all showing medium ratings. The results also revealed that there was statistically significant difference in the mean scores between the two groups specified at .05 level, t(233)= -6.497, p<0.001, r=.392. Higher institutions in Ghana need to adopt the blended mode of instruction in order to enhance effective teaching and learning process.