EFFECTIVE BLENDED LEARNING IN HIGHER EDUCATION DURING COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic situation has impacted the entire education system, especially universities, and brought a new phase in education, “blended learning.” The objective of the research was to study the relationship of eight independent factors: e-learning environment, e-learning facilitation, e-learning materials, e-learning technical support, instructors’ personal attention, interaction with instructors, interaction with peer students, and laboratory learning environment, in the provision of effective blended learning in higher education during COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, an extended relationship of gender and level of course with the effective blended learning was studied. A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted with the students of higher education institutions in the Kingdom of Bahrain, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, with a self-administered questionnaire aimed to learn the students’ perception of blended learning. All levels of undergraduate and postgraduate students took part in the study with a sample size of 1229. Ultimately, this study used a Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) approach to find the positive relationship between the effective blended learning and the eight independent variables and two mediating variables in the higher education sector. The study results portrayed a positive relationship between the eight independent variables and blended learning effectiveness in higher education institutions. The findings revealed that there is a difference in the students' perception of gender, level of the course, and the effectiveness of blended learning in the HEIs. The research offers guidance to governing bodies, administrators, and teachers of HEIs in decision-making and improves their actions to provide the best teaching and learning through blended learning. HEIs need to focus on the study results to enhance blended learning effectiveness based on e-learning environment, e-learning facilitation, e-learning materials, e-learning technical support, instructors’ personal attention, interaction with instructors, interaction with peer students, and laboratory learning environment. Also, since there is a significant difference between the gender, level of the course, and blended learning, providing blended learning based on gender and level of the course needs to be concentrated on by the higher education institutions.