Relationship Between Learners' Characteristics and Learning Behavior of Japanese Students in Blended Learning Environment: A Three-Year Study.

For three consecutive years, the authors have surveyed bachelor and masters students who were enrolled in blended courses at a Japanese university, in order to observe learners' behavior while engaged in blended courses and to develop an technique for organizing blended learning. Although survey results for each year were analyzed and discussed, no overall analysis and discussion have been done to date. Further, within three years, contextual issues for students, as well as teaching staff may have dramatically changed. Thus, being able to extract those changes will contribute significantly to the improvement of blended learning. The aim of this study, therefore, is to show quantitative differences in the causal relationship between learner characteristics and learning behavior across student levels (bachelors vs. masters) and the three survey years. Students were enrolled in two-unit bachelor or masters courses which were taught as blended courses by the same professor as blended courses. Students attended the face-to-face class and were also able to access the online content outside of class. The total number of students with valid survey data was 201 (91 bachelors; 110 masters). The survey instruments measured four constructs: motivation, personality, thinking styles and self-assessment of online learning experience. Three indices were used as indicators of learning performance: "the number of days attended", "the number of completed modules", and "the online test scores". To create common indices for learner's characteristics and learning experience, a factor analysis was conducted by analyzing the data set which included additional same format data from the extended surveys. Total numbers were 558 samples for learner characteristics and 456 samples for learning experience. As a result, revised factors were extracted, namely, four factors for characteristics: thinking style (legislative and judicial), positive emotionality, motivation, conscientiousness, and three factors for learning experience: e-learning evaluation, learning habits, learning strategies. To determine the relationship between these factors, a causal analysis was conducted using the Structural Equation Modeling technique and parameters were compared between groups using statistical tests. Differences among path diagrams for two student groups and three years could provide key points for organizing blended learning. When comparing results between bachelor and masters students, the impact of e-learning evaluation was significantly different. Differences on the impact of e-learning evaluation and "number of days attended" were also detected across three years. For bachelor students, the impact of conscientiousness, e-learning evaluation and learning habits were significantly different across three years, and the impact of motivation, conscientiousness, e-learning evaluation were significantly different for masters students. These differences may have resulted from students' familiarity with blended learning environments and one's level of information literacy. Students' information literacy was measured during one particular year, and then the relationship with common factors was analyzed. Comparing the causal paths between bachelor and masters students, the impact of conscientiousness and information literacy for operational confidence and knowledge understanding were significantly different. These results provide evidence that there are some key points regarding learner's characteristics that need to be considered, and which could help, in the design of effective blended learning environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]