Identifying Criteria that Should be Considered when Deciding the Proportion of Online to Face-to-Face Components of a Blended Course

Over the last decade blended learning has been growing in use and popularity, particularly in higher education, as it has proved to be an effective approach for accommodating an increasingly diverse student population whilst adding value to the learning environment through incorporation of different online delivery methods. Despite this growing interest, designing a successful blended learning course is still challenging for many academics in the Higher Education sector. A major design problem is deciding the proportion of online to face-to-face components to incorporate into the blended course. This study contributes to addressing this problem by: (i) identifying criteria that teachers should consider when deciding the proportion of online components in their blended learning courses, and (ii) rating the importance of each of these criteria. It employs a two-round online modified Delphi survey to achieve its aims.