Impact of Blended Learning on Teacher Education for Tutors at Bangladesh Open University

Bangladesh is a developing country with rapid economic growth for the last few years and it has made tremendous development in the adoption of internet and mobile technologies at affordable prices. Technology-enabled learning (TEL) is becoming a motive force of the pedagogical innovations in higher education institutions around the globe. In line with this, institutes in Bangladesh are implementing blended learning for uplifting the quality of education at all levels. Bangladesh Open University (BOU) – the only distance educational institution in the country – runs programs using open and distance learning (ODL) system where TEL and open educational resources (OER) play a vital role in the delivery of courses. For tutors’ professional development in the aspect of TEL, BOU implements teacher education courses using a blended learning approach. This paper presents the implementation of the blended “teacher education course” under European Union-funded BLTeae project using Moodle Learning Management System (LMS) and discusses the impact on teacher education in Bangladesh from 2018 to 2019. At the end of the implementation, the tutors’ blended learning (BL) experience was studied by focus group discussion and qualitative analysis. Results show that tutors’ blended instruction could achieve better learning experiences than a traditional class with a higher satisfaction score. The outcome of the research shows that BL can improve quality in higher education, has the potential to improve teacher education, and should be recommended to the mainstream teacher education in Bangladesh
although there are challenges to implementing blended learning as the IT infrastructure is relatively limited.