Blended Learning Course Experience Scale (BLCES)

Abstract

The Blended Learning Course Experience Scale (BLCES), developed by Bhagat, Cheng, Koneru, Fook, and Chang (2023), serves as a crucial instrument for evaluating students’ perceptions of their experience within Blended Learning (BL) environments. The creation of the BLCES addressed a critical need for standardized psychometric tools designed to measure subjective student experiences in these flexible educational settings.

This 19-item measure was derived through a rigorous process involving a comprehensive literature review, analysis of existing scales, and refinement based on expert feedback. Validation was conducted using data collected from undergraduate students in Malaysia. Both Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) supported a stable three-factor structure. The study reported satisfactory results regarding the reliability and validity of the scale, confirming its utility as an original inventory for assessing the Blended Learning Course Experience construct.

Keywords

Blended Learning Course Experience, Course Design, Learning Experience, Personal Factors, Student Perceptions, Structural Validity, Educational Measures, College Students, Blended Learning.

Authors

Bhagat, Kaushal Kumar; Cheng, Chia-Hui; Koneru, Indira; Fook, Fong Soon; Chang, Chun-Yen

Purpose

The primary objective of the BLCES is to quantitatively assess and understand student perceptions of their specific experiences within courses utilizing a Blended Learning model. This measure was developed to fill a gap in existing tools for evaluating students’ attitudes and perceptions toward hybrid educational environments, which emphasize student flexibility in managing online tasks.

The instrument provides educators and researchers with a standardized means of evaluating the effectiveness of blended course implementation across three key dimensions: the quality of the course design, the student’s learning outcomes and skills gained, and relevant personal factors affecting engagement.

Construct

The BLCES measures the overarching construct defined as the Blended Learning Course Experience. This construct is operationalized through 19 items distributed across three empirically derived factors:

• Course Design: Reflects student perceptions regarding the structure, organization, continuity between face-to-face and online components, clarity of expectations, and quality of instructor feedback.

• Learning Experience: Captures the perceived benefits and improvements resulting from BL, such as enhanced time-management skills, digital literacy, effective use of multimedia resources, and improved academic performance.

• Personal Factors: Addresses individual student variables relevant to the course environment, including feelings of anxiety, perceived technological difficulty, and the amount of time and effort required for the course.

Validity

The validity of the BLCES was established using robust psychometric procedures, ensuring the scale accurately measures the intended construct.

• Structural Validity: This was established through Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA), which confirmed the hypothesized three-factor model structure derived from the data.

• Convergent Validity: Assessed using Composite Reliability (CR) and Average Variance Extracted (AVE). The CR values met the recommended threshold of 0.7 (Hair et al., 2006) across all factors: Course Design (0.95), Learning Experience (0.92), and Personal Factors (0.71). AVE values were greater than 0.5 for Course Design and Learning Experience, indicating strong convergence within these factors.

• Discriminant Validity: This was confirmed by demonstrating that the square roots of the AVE for all constructs were significantly greater than their respective inter-construct correlations, ensuring adequate separation between the three factors.

Reliability

The reliability of the BLCES demonstrates excellent internal consistency, ensuring that the items within the scale consistently measure the same underlying construct.

Internal consistency was assessed using Cronbach’s alpha coefficients. The reliability coefficients for the individual factors ranged from 0.71 to 0.95, indicating good to excellent consistency across the sub-scales. The overall Cronbach’s alpha coefficient for the entire 19-item scale was 0.92, demonstrating a highly satisfactory level of overall reliability for the instrument.

Factor Analysis

The factor structure of the BLCES was established through a two-step process involving both exploratory and confirmatory techniques.

• Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA): Principal Component Analysis (PCA) with varimax rotation was performed. Following established psychometric guidelines, only items with factor loadings greater than 0.70 were retained, resulting in a 19-item, three-factor structure. This structure collectively explained 68.06% of the total variance, confirming the theoretical delineation of the factors: Course Design, Learning Experience, and Personal Factors.

• Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA): This analysis was conducted to confirm the stability of the three-factor model. The results indicated a satisfactory fit for the model based on standard fit indices: χ² (149) = 355.71, p < .001; RMSEA = 0.06; CFI = 0.96; GFI = 0.92; NFI = 0.93; TLI = 0.96. These indices provide strong evidence that the specified three-factor structure is a good representation of the collected data.

Instrument

Test Type: Original Inventory

Format: Inventory/Questionnaire (19 items)

Language Available: English

Population Group: Human (Male and Female)

Age Group: Adulthood (18 years and older)

Population Details: The validation sample consisted of undergraduate students located in Malaysia.

Test Methodology: The development and validation of the BLCES involved several key psychometric methodologies, including Test Validity (Construct Validity, Convergent Validity, Discriminant Validity), Test Reliability (Internal Consistency), and Factor Analysis (Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA), Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA), Principal Component Analysis).

Keywords

Course Design, Learning Experience, Personal Factors, Student Perceptions, Blended Learning Course, Structural Validity, College Students, Course Evaluation, Educational Measures, Student Attitudes.

Authors

Author ORCID Identifier:

• Bhagat, Kaushal Kumar: orcid.org/0000-0002-6861-6819

• Chang, Chun-Yen: orcid.org/0000-0003-2373-2004

Affiliation Email addresses:

• Bhagat, Kaushal Kumar: Centre for Educational Technology, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur

• Cheng, Chia-Hui: Graduate Institute of Science Education, National Taiwan Normal University

• Koneru, Indira: e-Learning Department, ICFAI Business School

• Fook, Fong Soon: Centre for E-Learning, Universiti Malaysia Sabah

• Chang, Chun-Yen: Graduate Institute of Science Education, National Taiwan Normal University

• Primary Contact Email: [email protected]

Correspondence Address:

• Bhagat, Kaushal Kumar: [email protected]

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

Permissions: Contact Publisher

Commercial Use: No

Fee: No

Test Year: 2023

Reference’s

Bhagat, K. K., Cheng, C.-H., Koneru, I., Fook, F. S., & Chang, C.-Y. (2023). Students’ Blended Learning Course Experience Scale (BLCES): Development and validation. Interactive Learning Environments, 31(6), 3971–3981. DOI: 10.1080/10494820.2021.1946566

Items of the Blended Learning Course Experience Scale (BLCES)

The Blended Learning Course Experience Scale (BLCES) consists of 19 items, which are categorized under three main factors: Course design, Learning experience, and Personal factors. The specific items are available in the Appendix of the source article on page 3981.