Is Higher Education Measuring Blended Learning the Wrong Way?

Blended learning has become a routine part of higher education. Institutions have invested heavily in combining online and face-to-face teaching and the model now features in courses across most disciplines and levels of study.

That wider adoption has brought a different challenge into view: judging the quality of student learning within these courses.

Institutions can see whether students access materials and complete online activities, but this shows what students did, not whether the different settings worked together to improve learning.

DEC research on student engagement suggests that different settings support different forms of learning. Face-to-face sessions support discussion and immediate feedback, while asynchronous settings create space for preparation and independent work.

This points to where the real value may lie: not in either setting alone, but in how well they are combined and how students move between them.

‍Different Settings Need a Clear Connection

Stronger blended models give each setting a clear role. In a flipped model, for example, students review core material before class, while scheduled time is used for discussion, application and problem-solving.

The connection between these settings matters. At the University of Nottingham Ningbo China (UNNC), faculty found that students often ignored optional online activities. The question became how to make pre-class work part of the course rather than an optional extra.

Marina Glushenkova, Assistant Professor in Economics at UNNC, said: "The single most critical design choice is to move away from a purely optional, supplementary model and toward one that integrates online activities with formal assessment and face-to-face teaching."

This meant linking online activities more closely to what happened in class and, in some cases, using low-stakes assessment to encourage participation. A pre-class task carries more weight when the next session builds on it.

Participation Does Not Always Show Learning

Institutions can track logins, video views, quiz completion and time spent online, but these measures show participation more readily than understanding.

Singapore Management University (SMU) had already found that blended courses generated plenty of data on access and activity. Building on this, James Foo, Senior Associate Director at the university, said: "We also found that effective learning in blended environments depended less on access to content and more on how the learning experience was structured."

Completion of online activities did not always mean students were well prepared. Some engaged closely with the material, while others delayed the work, rushed through it or struggled to recall it later. This led to greater attention on how students could demonstrate understanding before class.

A short application task or knowledge check can provide more useful evidence than completion alone. It can also give faculty information to shape the next class.

The Flexibility Trap

Flexibility remains one of the main attractions of blended learning. Across almost 7,000 student survey responses at SMU, learner autonomy was the most consistently valued dimension of the blended experience.

Yet reduced face-to-face time was not always experienced as an efficiency gain. Some students saw the online component as additional workload.

Moving an activity online may give students more control over when they complete it, but the experience can still feel fragmented if its purpose is unclear. Clear sequencing helps students understand where each activity sits and what it prepares them to do next.

Scaling Blended Learning Changes Faculty Work

Blended learning also changes the work required from faculty. Educators may need to rethink the order of learning, create digital activities and decide how online work should inform later teaching.

At UNNC, workload and faculty motivation were identified as barriers to wider adoption, as course development demanded more time and technical support than faculty could readily absorb.

SMU faced a similar issue as adoption expanded. Intensive support for individual courses became difficult to sustain, so more support was moved into the design stage and delivered through structured faculty development (i.e. workshops and consultations) and shared resources.

At a greater scale, blended learning becomes an institutional capability. Its quality depends partly on whether faculty have the time and support required to redesign courses and sustain them.

Beyond the Offline/Online Split

Blended learning is often described by proportion: how much happens online and how much takes place face to face. That measure says little about the quality of the experience.

A more useful assessment considers the purpose of each setting, the connections between them. It also takes into account whether students experience the blended learning model as coherent rather than fragmented, and whether faculty have the workload and support needed to sustain it.

This article draws on insights from the DEC Best Practices Collection, available exclusively to DEC Members.