Instructors' Decisions to Continue to Use Blended Learning in their Courses in Higher Education Institutions : A Mixed Methods Study in the United Arab Emirates

Mohamed, Dina and Bligh, Brett and Oztok, Murat (2024) Instructors' Decisions to Continue to Use Blended Learning in their Courses in Higher Education Institutions : A Mixed Methods Study in the United Arab Emirates. PhD thesis, Lancaster University.

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Abstract

Blended learning (BL) has been recently adopted within Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), in hopes of providing a better learning environment and reaping the benefits of BL. However, there is insufficient research which presents the critical factors which impact the effectiveness of BL courses within varying cultural contexts. There is also little research which presents instructors’ BL continuity decisions and portrays which critical factors impact those decisions. Thus, the aim of this study is to gain an in-depth comprehension of instructors’ decisions to continue using BL as a teaching modality in HEIs in the UAE and identify the principal critical factors which they perceive to impact their continuity decisions. To accomplish such, a mixed method, qualitative dominant, sequential research design had been employed to collect the needed data. A questionnaire had first been responded by 319 instructors and a follow-up interview was conducted with 21 instructors. The findings of this research study show that a majority of instructors in the UAE intend to continue to teach their BL courses, yet, several conditions, for example adopting different blend types and changing the overall course structure, would need to be addressed by senior managers to further improve their willingness to continually teach BL courses in the future. The findings also present the most perceived influential critical factors which impact instructors’ continuity decisions, such as Instructor Control and Service Quality, and a further cultural factor, Learner Engagement, was identified, which is rooted from the nature of the students who study at HEIs in the UAE. This research study provides several academic contributions to BL literature predominantly surrounding continuous intention to use (CIU) research and critical factors of BL. This study’s contributions include identifying cultural challenges, focusing on decision making as a whole, uncovering the reasons behind instructors’ decisions, identifying continuity critical factors and showcasing its relationship on instructors’ CIU decisions, discovering a cultural continuity critical factor, and presenting the components needed to achieve BL continuity within HEIs in the UAE