Abstract:
The Laureate English Program (LEP), in collaboration with Cambridge
University Press (CUP) and other partners, has rolled out a blended learning
solution for Laureate International Universities (LIU) network institutions of
higher education over the last five years. Since 2008, as a result of these
partnerships, over 40 LIU institutions have committed to initiating a blended
learning approach to EFL.The LEP-CUP collaboration has now fully
implemented this approach and offered these universities a viable approach to
overcoming the deficiencies of face-to-face (F2F)-only or online-only programs
previously in place. Feedback from these institutions indicate, however, that in
many instances students still do not engage sufficiently with the online
components of the new blended courses to make adequate use of the
extended time for learning English promised by a blended solution. This
second phase of collaborative research looked to LEP teachers for insights into
how this trend might be relevantly addressed. Following upon recently
completed doctoral research, an interview-based study was conducted with 30
teachers from 3 different continents to gather qualitative data on the topic.
Ini...