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Research on Vocational College Students’ Perceived Blended ESP Learning Based on Gender and Prior Experiences

Jianyun Xiao

Cabin Attendant Department, Shanghai Civil Aviation College, Shanghai, China

Abstract: With blended learning (BL) approach becoming increasingly popular in course delivery of tertiary education in China, it remains a significant research area to investigate learners’ experiences and feelings to improve teaching quality. This study aims to develop an effective BL model for a first-year compulsory ESP (English for Special purpose) course. After investigating 361 cabin service and security majors including 157 males and 204 females, it also examines students’ perceptions and opinions of the application of blended mode in the course. A questionnaire of three parts was developed as the research instrument. The results revealed that most learners had positive perceptions toward the blended learning approach, and variables such as gender and prior experiences with BL were correlated with students’ perceptions. Female students had more favorable feedback of BL than males, and having prior experiences was not a significant factor in students’ perceived learning effectiveness, but learners with BL experiences show better perceptions with respect to perceived usefulness, learning autonomy and overall satisfaction. The study presents pedagogical implications for improving and polishing the course in the BL environment in the future, and in particular provides instructional directions of fine-tuning of teaching when students’ gender and prior BL experiences are taken into consideration.

Keywords: Blended Learning, learner perceptions, gender differences, prior BL experiences

Received September 28, 2023; Revised October 31, 2023; Accepted November 07, 2023

Citation: Jianyun Xiao, Research on Vocational College Students’ Perceived Blended ESP Learning Based on Gender and Prior Experiences. American Journal of Educational Research, 11 (11). 752-760. January 2023. doi:10.12691/education-11-11-4

1. Introduction

In recent years, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has been used widely to improve cabin service in civil aviation. Implementing ICT is likely to facilitate language education by easing access to authentic language materials, enhancing learners’ exposure to linguistic input, and providing opportunities for interaction and production [1]. Before the outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic, blended learning (BL) adoption was still relatively new for EFL (English as a Foreign Language) teaching in tertiary education by incorporating ICT to enhance language instruction, but it has been a growing trend [2]. The outbreak of Covid-19 accelerated the process and the number of blended courses has increased enormously. However, until now there has been not a unified definition of BL, but basically it involves the combination of FTF (face-to-face) instruction and online learning [3-5]. Available evidence shows that many learners value the richness of interactions in FTF settings and the flexibility, convenience etc. about online learning [5]. About what is being blended, Graham identified three kinds: blending online and face-to-face instruction, blending instructional modalities, and blending instructional methods. Following this thought, in [6] Yoon and Lee further defined BL in ELT as “bringing together the positive attributes of online and offline education, including instructional modalities, delivery methods, learning tools, etc., in relation to language teaching and learning approaches and methods in order to reinforce the learning process, to bring about the optimal learner achievement, and to enhance the quality of teaching and learning”. Whether such claims are successfully met or not can be reflected from students’ feedback and opinions of their own BL experiences.

The Modernization of Education in China 2035 highlights the role of ICT, and the deep integration of it into education has become the focus of instructional innovation in China. ICT has provided new learning approaches and unprecedented abundant resources for college English teaching, and universities should fully utilize them to create a diverse teaching and learning environment and implement a Blended Learning model [7]. Now Blended Learning has gradually become “a new normal” in course delivery [5,8] of tertiary education in China. However, there is a paucity of English written literature revealing to the world how blended learning is applied in a Chinese university EFL (English as a Foreign Language) context and students’ feedback [2, 9], not to mention those in vocational contexts, which has been undervalued and neglected for a long time, as vocational students usually have lower academic achievement in College Entrance Exam of China. In May 2022, the newly revised "Vocational Education Law of the People's Republic of China" came into force, clarifying that vocational education is a parallel of general education with equal status, aiming to increase appeal of vocational education for students. Greater emphasis is placed to enhance the international competitiveness of vocational students in globalization in teaching, and their English learning experiences deserve great attention for research, yet only a few researchers focused on examining blended courses in the context of ESP [10]. Bueno-Alastuey and López Pérez [11] investigated an ESP blended course called English for Human Resources, reporting that students who had experienced ICT tools more fully had lower ratings for grammar and vocabulary and receptive skills, and higher ratings for pronunciation and productive skills. Rui Zhang designed a blended learning model of an English course for Agriculture and Forestry [10]. Her findings show that students’ related academic skills have been practiced in the peer interactivities, and they gradually get used to English immersion learning environment. Cabin crew use English to communicate with passengers around the world, so their English competence is a key factor in international flights. This study will investigate a course named English for Cabin Announcement in the BL environment. Moreover, for gender-segmented classes, it is also worth exploring whether there are significant differences in students’ BL perceptions regarding gender. China has imbalanced economy in different regions and freshmen’ different prior BL experiences need to be taken into account when conducting a BL course. To address these goals, the following questions need to be researched:

(1) What are Chinese vocational students’ perceptions toward a blended ESP course?

(2) Are there any differences in the participants’ BL perceptions between males and females?

(3) Are there any differences in BL perceptions between participants with and without prior experiences?

The present study developed a blended design of an ESP course by evaluating pedagogical practices to improve learning effectiveness. Moreover, it’s worthwhile to investigate students’ perceptions toward BL model, for the positive results can evidently show that students’ learning needs have been met. In addition, these can provide valuable insights for teachers to refine the course in the future.

2. Literature Review

Abundant research sources have unveiled benefits of BL, covering better individualized learning, greater flexibility and accessibility, the extension of learning materials and scenarios outside the classroom etc., despite disadvantages of BL, such as more distractions, increased workload, insufficient sense of community, learning isolation. The essence of BL is to create a highly engaged and individualized learning environment for learners, where they not only acquire common knowledge, but also pursue a self-construction of customized learning experience [11].

Knowing students’ opinions and perceptions of the potential of particular blended learning experiences and their contribution to the development of the different skills and areas of language can provide valuable information for blended learning design and implementation [12]. Since the early investigation into learner perceptions of CALL and its effectiveness in language teaching [13], a considerable amount of research has probed into the topic of students’ attitude toward BL under different contexts [5,14-18]. BL remains an imperative concept in colleges as its complete focus is concerned with the optimum combination to achieve the most effective learning and teaching experience [19].

Gender plays a significant role in students’ perceptions towards BL. Studies on gender differences have important theoretical value and practical significance for the different cognitive and behavioral traits of men and women in real life [20]. Researchers’ findings with respect to gender differences in BL have showed inconsistent results up to now. Some reported that there were no statistically significant differences as to students’ satisfaction on blended learning between females and males [21-22], while Salah Al-Fadhli claimed that female students’ mean scores outperformed their male counterparts in all areas [15], which is in line with such findings in favor of female students [23-25]. Song also found that there are gender differences in internal goals, as well as learning plans, control and management etc. between male and female college students, and female learners demonstrate a stronger motivation to learn [26]. However, other researchers contended that males were more satisfied with Blended Learning than female students [27-28]. In China, different expectations are placed on individuals of genders. Thus, it is very meaningful to seek whether there is a statistically significant difference between learners’ perceptions towards BL across gender, so that instructors can make different adaptations for classes of males and females. Moreover, there are conflicting opinions as to whether prior BL experiences are associated with students’ perceptions. Koohang found that students who had more prior experience with the Internet had significantly higher positive perceptions toward using the digital library [27]. Also Alsalhi, N. argued that BL was more in favor of those in the fourth academic year [25], but W. Zhang & C. Zhu pointed out that year of study did not show significant effects in the BL environment [29].

3. Methodology

3.1. Research Context

The research was conducted in the first semester from October 2022 to January 2023 at Shanghai Civil Aviation College (SCAC), which is one of the five colleges directly administered by Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC). The college has attached great importance to the cultivation of students' professional skills oriented to their future jobs. As the prospective cabin majors probably serve passengers from around the world, their English proficiency are of great importance to future performance in the workplace. The course in this research is an ESP course targeting freshmen in the first semester. In line with the authentic-situation flight process, it integrates International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), cabin terms and phrases, names of flight destinations, reading skills such as incomplete explosion, stressed and unstressed syllables, liaison, pauses of sense groups, rhythm etc. into teaching of the course, in order to qualify students’ English announcement delivering in the cabin of airlines. The course content was divided into two parts, a regular flight process from boarding to landing, as well as emergency landing and ditching. In addition, the course was also equipped with a WeChat add-on, which is an inflight announcement speech recognition widget to help students practice and learn outside classes. Table 1 gave a list of all the topics in the course, including 13 units.

Table 1. Learning Topics of the Course

3.2. Participants

There were 361 freshmen participating in this study. In recruitment interviews, major airlines are highly concerned about cabin attendants’ physical appearance, so accordingly each applicant is interviewed based on their outward looks and academic achievement in the college’s enrolment. They have preferred height, weight, appearance and figure. Height requirement for females as cabin attendance majors is from 164cm to 174cm and for males as air attendance and security majors from 174cm to 184cm. Students’ English level varied greatly, ranging from very low to intermediate. It should be pointed out that males and females are in divided classes not for cultural reason, but for major differentiation. Females are cabin service majors, while males are oriented for cabin security guards. Most of the first-year students had little knowledge of civil aviation and were not familiar with basic pronunciation and broadcasting skills. They simply relied on imitating or using approximate pronunciation to complete the announcement, obviously the delivering quality was far from being satisfactory. Moreover, they could not differentiate appropriate tone in delivering an announcement which is intended to render passengers warm service, or to inform passengers to pay attention to safety rules or emergency handling. Some students knew rules of reading skills, but correct application in their actual delivering is another matter.

Participants’ demographic information indicates that learners’ age ranged from 17 to 21, with an average of 18.6, males accounting for 43.5% and females 56.5%. Most students had BL experiences (78.4%).

3.3. Blended Course Design

In this research, instructors of SCAC participated in making MOOC sources, which were awarded “Provincial Top-quality BL Courses”, available on the platform (http://xueyinonline.com/). There are many instructional design practices, principles and models, and an effective instructional product is a challenging and time-consuming task [30]. X.Y. Feng proposed three principles of a successful BL design, shifting design perspective from instructional design to learning design, design approach from knowledge transfer to ability cultivation and design scope from front-end to full-process support [31]. This study adopted guidelines above for the course. In view of insufficient class hours and large-size classes, instructors designed a technology-empowered and student-centered instruction model of BL. It combines the advantages of traditional learning with E-Learning, in which teachers play a leading role in inspiring, guiding and monitoring students' enthusiasm, initiative and the creativity in the process of instruction. It was not a simple mix of online and offline learning, but a strategic reconstruction of them. The course design consisted of weekly face-to-face instruction and out-of-class online activities, including WeChat practice and out-of-class platform activities. FTF covered lectures, peer and group work, discussions and students’ performance assessment. And the online part involved platform-based activities to display course content, announcement making, giving assignments, proving feedback, taking quizzes and scoring students etc. Online activities were accessible on a built-in application “Xuexitong”, which is a digital app integrating mobile learning, knowledge sharing, mobile social networking and organization management. Students can have access to learning via multiple electronic devices, such as computers, tablets and mobile phones. The course lasted for 16 weeks in one semester. An overview was given in the first week to help students know about the course and blended learning mode. The teacher gave detailed instruction, including how to download the mobile application, what to do in three stages of BL, how to post discussions and upload assignments etc. in order to ensure that digital difficulty will not hinder any student’ learning. The course made use of the platform to construct the BL design by integrating online and offline learning systematically. Based on students’ online performance, instructors could design more targeted classroom activities. FTF is aimed to deepen, extend and consolidate what has been learned online.

BL model comprises three phases in implementation. In the pre-FTF session, students are required to have autonomous learning online. With the help of a task list posted by teachers, students need to go through learning resources on the platform, watching well-produced instruction videos, finishing various pre-class tasks and posting what confused them in the Discussion Forum. If students need a teacher’ help, they could turn to the teacher on the platform. The FTF session involves a combination of offline and online interactions. Teachers designed in-class activities to check on students’ learning, lectured reading skills the announcement delivery and organized activities to help students deliver linguistically and professionally satisfying announcements. Students internalized reading skills, important terms and key phrases under teachers’ guidance as well as their further exploration and discussion. Moreover, instructors analyzed and commented on the examples of students’ recoded videos from pronunciation, tone, emotion, expression etc. In the face-to-face communication of FTF, teachers’ individualized guidance can help students pay attention to subtle difference, and their pair work and group discussion contributing to their learning. The post-FTF session is the extension and improvement of what they have learned. Students should finish the assignment given by the teacher, practice reading announcements with the help of the add-on of WeChat and upload their own videos of reading announcements.

Students were assessed based on their online and offline performance, including FTF attendance, online visits, quiz scores etc. It is data-driven assessment, involving a dynamic individualized process, with teachers monitoring data periodically to encourage or warn students based on data in Learning Management System (LMS), which can reflect their engagement in online learning, interactivities with peers and instructor and periodical achievements.

3.4. Instruments

To examine the participants’ overall perceptions in the course, a post-instruction survey was conducted through a well-known survey platform (https://www.wjx.cn/). The questionnaire (in Table 2) was developed by referring related literature [2,32]. Section 1 contains demographic information of participants. In section 2, there were 13 items covering four dimensions, namely learning effectiveness, perceived usefulness, learning autonomy and overall satisfaction. Section 3 has three multi-choice questions and two open-ended questions inquiring challenges and suggestions.

3.5. Data Collection

To determine students’ perceptions of their blended learning experience, an online questionnaire was delivered to subjects in the last class. To obtain quantitative data, items in section 2 were based on a five-point Likert Scale from 1 for “strongly disagree” to 3 for “neutral” and 5 for “strongly agree”. In addition, participants were asked to write their answers to the open-ended questions for qualitative data. All the students were clearly stated that they should give honest responses serving for research purpose without any other intention, and their selections had no impact on their scores. The major findings are presented in the following sections.

Table 2. Questionnair

Table 3. KMO and Bartlett's Test

Table 3 shows the result of KMO value (0.896) and Bartlett’s test of Sphericity (p<0.001), which means that a factor analysis can be applied to data collected in section 2 of the questionnaire.

4. Results

Research Q1: What are the Chinese vocational students’ perceptions toward a blended ESP course?

Collected data were analyzed using SPSS 26.0. In Table 4, it can be seen that internal consistency reliability for the four factors (learning effectiveness, perceived usefulness, learning autonomy and overall satisfaction) were judged to be satisfactory, for every value of Cronbach’s alpha was greater than 0.70(respectively 0.881, 0.956, 0.954, 0.968), with scores ranging from 1 to 5. With regard to learning effectiveness, the results of learners’ responses in the three items show that the BL approach was perceived to be effective for the large part, falling into upper intermediate scale with mean scores (item 2=3.74, item 5=3.76, item 7=3.54). Most of participants (65.1%, including responses of “strongly agree” and “agree”) claimed that their cabin announcements had improved after a semester’s learning, while 18.8% of them didn’t see improvements. There were 65.9% (“strongly agree” and “agree”) of students who thought that activities and resources on the platform were closely linked with FTF, and 59% of them stated that BL activities were really effective , but it cannot be ignored that 24.3% of learners denied its effectiveness, so online and offline instruction are thought to be integrated for most of students, but there is still room for improving in learning effectiveness, especially in the aspect of blending activities and resources.

In terms of perceived usefulness, participants expressed their high approval of the BL design, with mean scores of 4.2, 4.19, 4.13 respectively for items 1, 3 and11. About 78.1% of learners agreed that the blended learning activities are diversified and interesting, and 77.6 % of them thought blended learning resources have promoted learning greatly, while 5.2% and 5.8% of them gave negative responses toward the two items above. Compared with traditional classroom learning, the blended learning experience was more effective for most learners as high as 75.9%.

In the aspect of learning autonomy, the mean scores of three related items (4, 9, 12) reached 4.2, 4.18, 4.17 respectively. 31.3%(“agree”) and 47.1%(“strongly agree”) of learners considered that they could learn at their own pace, and 29.6% (“agree”) and 47.6% (“strongly agree”) of them expressed their free choice in learning at any time under this BL approach. The students who thought that this BL approach had improved their efficiency of previewing and reviewing the course accounted for 30.7% (“agree”) and 46% (“strongly agree”). Under the BL approach, most students were willing to devote themselves to autonomous learning. Only 3.9% and 4.7% of them disagreed that they could learn at their own pace and at any time respectively.

When it comes to overall satisfaction, most of learners were satisfied with my blended learning experience in this course (30.5% for “agree” and 45.7% for “strongly agree”). They were willing to recommend the blended course to others (30.5% for “agree” and 47.1% for “strongly agree”). Moreover, they would like to adopt the blended course to continue learning (30.7% for “agree” and 47.6% for “strongly agree”). Finally, they enjoyed the blending experience of cabin announcement in this semester (31% for “agree” and 49% for “strongly agree”). For these four items (6, 8, 10, 13), the mean scores were 4.14, 4.19, 4.18, 4.23 respectively. Only about 5% of learners expressed their dissatisfaction toward the blended course and about 15% or a little above gave indefinite answers.

Table 4. Students’ Perceptions Toward BL

About items 14 and 15 regarding their BL experiences, students (41.3%) thought they made the most progress in the aspect of reading skills, and this was their favorite part. The auto-scoring WeChat add-on ranked the 2nd, taking up 21.3%. IPA came in the third place. They disliked quizzes most, and names of flight destinations followed. In their BL learning experience, what has attracted them most covered good instructional design, better teaching effectiveness, increased interactivity chances with peers and instructors, innovative teaching approach, learning not limited by time or space etc.

About encountered challenges in their BL experiences in question Item 17, students gave answers including too much workload, forgetting new terms easily, lacking immediate answers for their questions, shyness in FTF discussion etc. Overall, students gave positive comments toward the blended course in question 18, such as improving their English proficiency, supplying resources for preview and review, encouraging online discussion, enhancing confidence in speaking English, experiencing simulated work scenarios in uploading assignments, finding an alternative to catch up in absence of FTF session etc. but a small percentage of students complained about difficult online quizzes, absence of point reading new words, their lack of self-discipline. They suggested instructors to give more timely feedback, increasing opportunities of interaction, more individualized learning guidance etc.

Research Q2: Were there any differences in the participants’ BL perceptions between males and females?

It can be seen from Table 6 that F values in the independent sample test results are 0.326, 42.121, 36.045, 32.849 respectively on the four factors, and the Sig value of learning effectiveness is 0.569 >0.05, indicating that variances are equal and data in the first line can be used; while the Sig values of other three factors are all 0＜0.05, showing that the variances are not equal and data in the second line can be adopted. The data statistics of females and males are shown in Table 5, showing that the average score in learning effectiveness of females is 3.806, higher than the average score of males in this category (3.516). In view of T-test value=2.216 and Sig.value=0.027<0.05, there are significant differences in the perceptions of learning effectiveness between females and males. It can be judged that females have better perceptions than males in learning effectiveness of the blended course. Similarly, the Sig.values on other three dimensions (perceived usefulness, learning autonomy, overall satisfaction) are less than 0.001, and respective mean scores (M0=4.404, M1=3.875; M0=4.423, M1=3.873; M0=4.426, M1=3.871), indicating that females have higher perceptions than males on these three factors.

Table 5. Learners’ Descriptive Responses Based On Gender

Table 6. Result of Independent Test Between Males And Females

Table 7. Learners’ Responses Based On Prior BL Experience

Table 8. Independent Samples Test for BL experiences

Research Q3: Were there any differences in BL perceptions between participants with and without prior experiences?

From the following Table 8, we can see that in the Levene's Test for Equality of Variances on the four factors, all the Sig values are greater than 0.05, indicating that the equal variances are assumed and data in the second line are useful. It should be noted that Sig. value of learning effectiveness p=0.917>0.05, which means there are no significant differences in the perceptions of this factor between participants with and without prior BL experiences. That is, having prior BL experiences or not does not influence students’ perceptions in learning effectiveness significantly. However, the Sig.values on other three dimensions (p=0.023, 0.032, 0.017) are less than 0.05, showing that there are statically significant differences, which means prior BL experiences had impact on learners on these factors. The data statistics in Table 7 show that the average scores in perceived usefulness, learning engagement and overall satisfaction of students with prior BL experiences were 4.234, 4.237, 4.245, while the average scores of learners having no prior BL experiences were 3.953, 3.991, 3.968, meaning that learners with prior experiences had better perceptions on these three dimensions.

5. Discussion

To enrich the literature regarding how Chinese students in vocational colleges perceive BL approach in learning ESP, this study designed a MOOC-based BL approach for the course named Cabin Announcement Delivering, and investigated 361participants’ responses toward the blended course. The results show that the majority of students had a positive view, indicating the introduction of BL is beneficial to students participating in the course. This is in line with previous studies [2,9] [14,22] [29,33]. Learners regarded the instructional design of the blended course effective and useful. When students attribute a low value to BL learning, they have no confidence in the effectiveness of a task and are less motivated to learn [34]. Similarly, Marcelo Werneck Barbosa reported that BL increased opportunities for faculty members to design more effective teaching and learning environments [35]. According to [20], perceived usefulness has a positive impact on students’ online active learning intention. Diversified activities enriched their learning experiences and they regarded BL better than traditional classroom teaching. Learner autonomy renders learners subject consciousness and self-awareness which later constantly stimulate study passion or enthusiasm, giving full effort in initiating one’s own leaning process [36]. BL supplies learners to learn at their own pace and at any time. In the face of overwhelming learning tasks in limited time, students need a resort to provide resources for previewing and reviewing lessons, for they can retrieve the videos for previewing and reviewing and get ready for the assessment. Students who feel good about their academic results perceive satisfaction with their academic experience, and experience a sense of achievement with what they have learnt. For cabin majors, announcement delivering is necessary skill in their future job positions. Most of students expressed their willingness to continue using MOOC resources.

In the comments and suggestions of section 3 of the questionnaire, participants expressed their approval of BL mode in helping their English learning and providing a similar scenario to experience. In the MOOC-based BL settings, students uploaded their own video assignments assessed not only by reading quality, but also concerned with professional requirements, like wearing appropriate make-up and uniforms, proper facial expressions and tones etc. Occupational skills are not neglected in vocational students’ ESP instruction. BL has brought about positive feedback in improving students’ professional skills, solving real-world challenges or context-specific problems [31]. This is also aligned with the finding that MOOCs can play important roles in terms of supporting professional development and career advancement by providing useful courses in these areas to their users [37].

Factors, such as work overload, distractions and specific students’ profiles, could account for the population for whom the experience is not positive [12], which are also echoed in the open-ended questions about challenges in students’ BL practices. Generally speaking, vocational students’ academic achievement is considered to be lower than their peers in universities. According to [24], the low achiever group should gain more attention when blended learning is implemented because it requires more self-regulated learning on the part of the students next to the increased workload or self-paced learning in this learning mode. This helps to demonstrate vocational students’ greater possibilities of getting distracted easily in online learning. The first semester is the transition period from EGP in high school to ESP learning for vocational students, so it’s really a challenging workload for them to get accustomed to learning the course with abundant terms under the BL model.

Being consistent with previous studies, the findings show that participants’ BL perceptions were associated with gender and prior experiences. Females had more positive perceptions for the blended course than males, which is in accordance with the findings from [15] [20] [24-25]. Consistently, Y. Dang al. claimed that although females have lower computer self-efficacy, they have more positive feeling of perceived accomplishment or enjoyment of the blended class [38]. This is evidenced by claims that the self-regulation ability of female college students in the online learning environment is significantly higher than that of male students [39]. Students who lack self-regulation abilities may be easily distracted by other things (e.g., online games) and feel frustrated if they cannot accomplish the online learning tasks as planned [37]. Another possible explanation is that girls are more aware than boys of a blended learning platform in terms of the degree to which learning objectives and teaching activities need to be matched, and the emotional engagement level of girls in blended learning is significantly higher than that of boys [20].

Having prior BL experiences makes no difference to students with regard to learning effectiveness; however, learners show significant differences toward BL in perceived usefulness, learning autonomy and overall satisfaction. Students with previous experiences show higher perceptions in the three aspects above of BL. Possibly this is because learners with experiences are more confident with the online learning environment and are likely to be engaged in online learning activities [40]. It is important to present students how the instructional design has formative benefits and results in beneficial outcomes, and to do this starting early in the semester when the benefits are not yet beginning to manifest themselves [16]. M.C. Bueno-Alastuey and M.V. Lopez Pe´rez also recommended adding guides and training to blended learning experiences to diminish the number of students rejecting the use of ICT [12]. Most of first-year students have just finished their “traditional teaching-learning approach with the supervision of course instructors” [37] in high school, and it takes time particularly for those without prior experiences to get used to BL model. This may explain that their learning autonomy was not as high as those with prior BL experiences. They regarded BL model less useful and satisfactory, which is in accordance with the statement that the first contact with BL brings new challenges to students since they need to be more proactive and organized and take more responsibility for their learning process [35]. Thanks to the teacher’s course overview in the first class, students had a general understanding of BL model, so there was no statistically significant result in rating learning effectiveness with regard to prior experiences. As Robert Ayres pointed out, there is still the need for some basic training to get learners up to speed with basic computer handling and navigation [13].

6. Conclusions and Implications

The results of this study provide strong evidence in adopting BL approach when delivering an ESP course. Firstly, this study designs a MOOC-based BL mode for an ESP course and advocates the adoption of BL practices based on participants’ positive learning experiences. In view of limited FTF hours and large-size classes, the study has proved the BL approach to be a useful solution in promoting their ESP learning for the majority of students, for it increases “individualized practice and feedback, which are often lacking in big classes, and, furthermore, could bring into the classroom authentic material, interactions and tasks” [12]. Secondly, females have better perceptions toward the BL approach in the four dimensions compared with males. Thus, instructors can render students of different genders tailored BL instructions and requirements. On the one hand, more patience from teachers is needed to encourage and motivate males in their BL learning, for girls tend to follow teachers’ requirements better in this context. On the other side, instructors can give more strict monitoring measures for males on the platform through technical designs by collaborating with computer technicians. Blended learning is not a “one size fits all” model. Course designers are supposed to tailor their blended classrooms to satisfy students’ growing expectations and different learning styles [9]. Thirdly, there is no statistically significant difference between students with and without prior BL experiences in perceived learning effectiveness, yet they show significant difference in perceived usefulness, learning autonomy and overall satisfaction. Instructors can give those students without prior BL experiences extra help to get them more prepared for BL conceptually and technically. In the group work, instructors should give considerations in allocating them into different groups for peer assistance. To solve some students’ complaint of too much workload, instructors can divide online learning tasks into two kinds: compulsory and optional. Those struggling students only need to finish required tasks to lower their workload. And instructors can design a variety of activities to help students review and consolidate what have learnt. In addition, they can collaborate with technical personnel to develop a convincing and powerful spot reading system to help students familiarize key terms in ESP, so that leaners will not forget them easily.

About the limitations, this study only adopted the questionnaire to collect data to examine students’ perceptions for assessing BL effects, but other data such as students’ scores or LMS learning records on the platform can also be incorporated into future research. Teachers’ professional skills, teachers’ support, students perceived values of tasks, achievement goal expectations, self-efficacy, learning environment, interaction etc. are all key factors that affect student perceptions [31]. In future research, more variables above can be covered to establish a framework of key success factors of BL, or to probe into mediating or moderating effects of some factors, aiming to get a deeper understanding of BL perceptions in ESP.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The author would like to thank all the participants in the research and thank journal editors and anonymous reviewers for reviewing this paper. Many thanks go to funding provided by Shanghai Civil Aviation College (Grant No.XJKT-2023-6).

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