Internet Learning Volume 6, Number 2, Fall 2017/Winter 2018 | Page 8

Better Together: How Blending Course Modalities Impacts Student Persistence
of similar on-ground courses. Notably,
most of these studies tend to be small-N,
non-reproducible assessments, the largest
collection of which can be found at
the No Significant Difference website
(http://www.nosignificantdifference.
org/). A more recent meta-analysis by
the Ithaka S+R group (Wu, 2015) confirms
both the lack of methodological
rigor and the finding of no significant
difference in student outcomes between
online and on-ground courses. Perhaps
the most referenced meta-analysis
in recent years was produced by the
U.S. Department of Education in 2010
(Means, Toyama, Murphy, Bakia, &
Jones, 2010), in which they found that
“blended and purely online learning
conditions implemented within a single
study generally result in similar student
learning outcomes. When a study
contrasts blended and purely online
conditions, student learning is usually
comparable across the two conditions”
(p. xvi). The general finding of this meta-analysis
is that blended and online
learning outcomes are comparable to
classroom instructions, yet where statistically
significant differences do exist
between modalities, blended learning
tends to produce superior outcomes.
When discussing blended or
hybrid learning, it is important to understand
the terminology being used.
There have been multiple definitions
put forth to capture the terms blended
courses or hybrid courses, with the majority
of those definitions predicated
on the amount of classroom seat-time
that is replaced with online instruction.
For example, the State of Texas adopted
a reporting definition which states,
“A hybrid/blended course is a course in
which a majority (at least 50 percent but
less than 85 percent) of the planned instruction
occurs when the students and
instructor(s) are not in the same place”
(THECB, 2017). This operational definition
is similar to others in use.
Blending or hybrid curricula can
have multiple meanings, however. Moving
beyond the concept of a blended
course, we move to the idea of a blended
curriculum. Kim (2007) offers a general
definition, “A blended curriculum is a
set of courses, where some of the courses
are blended, some are purely e-learning
courses, and others are purely traditional
courses” (p. 4). The implication is
that this curriculum has been blended
by purpose or design and formally offered
to the students. However, much
of the emerging practice at institutions
is informal blending of a curriculum.
Bloemer and Swan (2013) inform us
that informal blending is the phenomenon
where “students [are] mixing onground
and online courses to complete
post-secondary programs” (p. 52). The
growth of students mixing modality can
be seen via the Civitas Learning data set
across 72 different institutions and institutional
types representing over 1.5
million students: fully 25% of those students
have mixed modalities.
Recognition of the existence of
informal blending has emerged relatively
recently, and as such there has not
been a significant amount of research
published on the impact of informal
blending on student progression, retention,
or completion. A few notable
recent papers highlight some of the ear-
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