Engaging Vocational College Students through Blended Learning: Improving Class Attendance and Participation

Perfection is difficult to achieve if one is teaching knowledge skills to the students in Vocational College for their time courses using the conventional learning methods currently practiced. Blended learning combines two methods for e-learning and also face-to-face inside or outside the classroom. Previously, the students had undertaken a traditional face-to-face classroom delivery for a module on teaching and learning. Attendance for the lectures was poor and interaction between the lecturer and students was limited. Using the collaboration concept of the “sharing is caring” which is the potential a student can achieve given the guidance of a teacher and the collaboration of others, the module focused the learning sessions on scenarios where students worked in groups to achieve an answer to the problems within the scenarios. The core of the module is an e-learning package on mentorship in vocational learning which is named “Voc-Learning”. Built around this are a series of face-to-face group work sessions, short lectures, web application and an online reflective discussion using Web 2.0 technologies. Some of the applications that were utilized in Web 2.0 have been explored but not much research has been done in the vocational field.