BLENDED-LEARNING - AN EFFECTIVE TOOL FOR THE PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT OF HIGHER EDUCATION TEACHERS
Authors: Mironov Cosmina , Borzea popovici Anca , Ciolan Lucian ion 
Published: February 2023

The POS-DRU project “Continuous training by means of ‘blended learning’ for higher education teachers” implemented by University of Bucharest in partnership with University Babes-Bolyai from Cluj-Napoca, West University of Timisoara and Softwin company offers to higher education academic staff (HETs) the opportunity to develop a set of complex competencies in order to answer to the challenges addressed by contemporary society and the main beneficiaries of higher education – the students.
The general goal of the project aims at offering the opportunity and increasing the participation of HETs to continuous training programs in the following areas: quality assurance; higher education pedagogy (student-centred learning); students’ professional practice, by means of an integrated training program articulated around a blended learning methodology.
Blended learning is on the rise in higher education area. Well-grounded researches clearly demonstrate how the blended learning approach embraces the traditional values of face-to-face teaching and integrates the best practices of online learning. Face to face time can be used to engage learners in advanced interactive experiences. Meanwhile, the online sequence of the course can provide learners with multimedia-rich content at any time of day, anywhere they have internet access. This allows for an increase in scheduling flexibility for learners.
In addition to flexibility and convenience for learners, studies show early evidence that a blended instructional approach can result in learning outcome gains and increased enrolment retention. Also, this approach has proven to both enhance and expand the effectiveness and efficiency of teaching and learning in higher education across disciplines.
These are just a few of the considerations taken into account by the promoters of the project when designing the program dedicated to higher education teachers. As such, the project aimed to answer to a set of clearly expressed needs by HETs that haven’t been given a solution yet, while it develops flexible structures of learning which support lifelong learning and a modern, quality higher education.
From the logic of this project, there can be mentioned three major stages of development:
(1)	analysis of the specific training needs of the persons belonging to the target groups;
(2)	designing the training modules and courses;
(3)	delivering / implementing the training activities with the beneficiaries.
Between January and April 2010 the training needs’ analysis (TNA) was implemented unfolded by each of the three partner universities. It was based on a complex methodological set of tools consisting of investigation using questionnaires and focus-groups. To this investigation participated more than 700 HETs belonging to the target groups established in the project (managers, internal auditors and members of quality assurance committees, novice HETs and senior HETs, respectively coordinators of professional practice) and covered three regions of economic development (Bucharest, North-Western region and Western region).
In the present paper we will focus on the second specific goal Analysis of HETs’ perception regarding the participation to training programs and regarding the desirable strategies for training and/or development and the subsequent items in order to demonstrate the role and value of blended learning for higher education training programs. The questionnaires contained two specific questions relevant to our present interest:
Q4. Which of the training methods presented below do you consider to be best suited to your objectives related to the continuous professional training?
Q5. How do you appreciate your expertise as a higher education teacher in the field of: a) e-learning; b) blended learning.
These two questions and the subsequent answers were considered relevant as they proved that blended learning is perceived as an effective way to design specific programs for the development of higher education teachers, while their expertise in the field is still scarce. These ideas were truly relevant for the proponents in order to build both the content of training as well as the manner of its delivery, while acknowledging the fact that besides the specific competencies aimed by the program at its core, there will be developed the IT competences as well as the lifelong learning competences in enhanced technological environments.
The second stage in the project development (May 2010 – October 2011) consisted in the development of the training content and the learning platform. We relied on the rich expertise of our technical partner in developing educational tools for supporting learning in technology enhanced learning environments as well as on the analysis of some other learning platform developed in Romania and dedicated to the continuous training of different professional categories. In the paper we will present some of the main features of the learning platform which promote it as a professional instrument of competence development.
Since November 2011 the training courses have started using a face to face approach, also a videoconference system which allows direct communications with trainers from the other university centres and an effective use of resources, while the platform is being used by more than 350 professional both trainers and learners. In the paper we will present some of the opinions of the participants to the training regarding the impact of this particular learning environment.