‘Pedagogy is the driver, technology is the accelerator’

Michael Fullan

The European Commission is strongly advocating for the integration of technology-based teaching across the higher education system (European Commission, 2014). Research would suggest to best engage students and to promote learning, teaching approaches that go beyond traditional lecture instruction are the most effective (Ferreri & O’Connor, 2013). This is important and indeed necessary for two reason (O’Flaherty & Phillips, 2015): one, there are suites of technology available to enhance student learning and two, students particularly those of the current millennial generation (born after 1980) expect it. Simply, for this generation they require learning and engagement to be reactionary and immediate. Consequently, in order to promote learning, maintain student engagement and to increase student satisfaction, the utilisation of technology with or without traditional pedagogical approaches, is considered essential (Brown, 2016). Academics across the world are increasingly incorporating online tools into face-to face teaching approaches (Eagan, et al., 2014). The mixture of face-to-face methods and the use of online tools for instruction are referred to in the higher education literature as blending (Drysdale, Graham, Spring, & Halverson, 2013). Blending incorporates traditional face-to-face instruction with the affordances of online tools. The experience of Calderón et al. (2016) using social media to engage first year undergraduate students is just an example of a blended approach in higher education. Thus, the purpose of this paper was to analyse the perception of third year undergraduate degree students about their learning after experiencing a module delivered through a technology-based teaching approach (blended instructional practice).

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