Mentoring strategies: The relation of teachers' teaching approach and students' self-direction in blended learning environment
Résumé
For decades, undergraduate students’ failure has become a recurring problem. Some researchers have shown that students’ autonomy and their self-direction are important to supports the success of their studies (Coulon, 2005; Annoot, 2012) and lifelong learning. Other studies of students’ failure in university have highlighted the necessity of learning in students’ autonomy and self-direction. In line with the objectives of higher education institutions, those competencies are considered to be developed in many courses. Some of these courses have been designed in a blended learning mode which, per the literature, encourage students’ self-direction (Deschryver and Letor, 2012, Vaughan, Cleveland-Innes and Garrison, 2013, Peraya, Charlier and Deschryver, 2014). However, students’ failure rate remains high in France. Several aspects, such as communication tools, training modalities including teaching approaches and mentoring roles adopted by teachers, can influence the way students learn as well as their learning outcomes (Entwistle, 2003; Carre, Jézégou et al., 2011, Deschryver and Lebrun, 2014, Clutterbuck, 2014). Since the failure rate of undergraduate students remains high while they take courses in blended modalities, it seems necessary for us to investigate the mentoring strategies adopted by teachers. The aim of this research work is to understand the relationship between teachers’ mentoring strategies, especially teachers’ teaching approaches in blended learning courses and students’ self-direction. Our main hypotheses are that teachers who adopt student-focused teaching approach conceive their blended course as a learning-centered environment and that students whose teacher adopt student-focused approach develop significantly their self-direction in learning. We focus on undergraduate university lecturers in France who design their course in blended modalities and their students. The 2005 version of the Approach to Teaching Inventory (Trigwell, Prosser and Ginns, 2005) will be translated into French and will be used to identify teachers’ teaching approaches. Observations will be organized to verify teachers’ responses in the questionnaire and increase the objectivity of collected data. Our first observation showed that the teacher is more likely to adopt student-focused approach in teaching blended learning course. We are waiting for other observations as well as other responses to questionnaire to analyze the results further. In order to identify students’ self-direction in learning, they are asked to answer the Self-Directed Learning Readiness Scale (Guglielmino, 1977) to measure their self-direction in learning, before and after completing a blended learning course.