Online and classroom learning in a 'Dynamics of Religion' (DYNAREL) course: the integration of a web-based learning-teaching tool into classroom-based instruction

Antonio L S Ingles Jr
De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde (DLS-CSB)
Manila, the Philippines

'The Dynamics of Religion' (Dynarel) is the first hybrid theology course to be offered by De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde, Manila, the Philippines. It consists of two parts, namely 'The Church' and 'The Sacraments'.

This study focuses on the integration of web-based modules on 'The Church' into a regular class of 43 students that met for 1.5 hours twice a week for seven weeks. The research aims were to: (1) find out the students' perceived performance in the web-enhanced course in terms of the criteria for a constructivist online learning environment; (2) assess the effects on their academic performance; and (3) examine their ability to exhibit certain indicators of critical thinking.

Guided by a 'practical-deliberative-interpretivist perspective' in an action research approach (Masters, 1995), the researcher-tutor utilized data triangulation to examine and interpret the following sources one by one and together: (1) the results on a Constructivist Online Learning Environment Survey (COLLES) administered to the students (Dougiamas and Taylor 2002); (2) the students' grades on each of the four online quizzes and an online mid-term examination; (3) their overall mid-term grades; and (4) the critical thinking skills shown in their online journal entries as indicated by the Holistic Critical Thinking Scoring Rubric (HCSTR) (Facione and Facione 1994). Of the 43 students who were invited to take COLLES, 27 responded, from whom a systematic sampling with an interval of 3 (i = 27/9) was used, giving a total sample of nine.

The COLLES results indicated that, on all six scales, the 27 students perceived themselves as having a 'close to optimal' learning environment, while the nine students viewed it as a 'close to very favourable' learning environment. The HCTSR results showed that the nine students' critical thinking skills were satisfactory, but they raised some pedagogical issues. The relevant findings suggest that a dynamic learning atmosphere had been created, with seven of the nine students passing the mid-term grading and improving their overall scores in the online quizzes, mid-term examinations and journal entries.

In general, the web-based delivery of learning modules on 'The Church', without any reduction in the amount of time spent in a face-to-face classroom setting, validated the effectiveness of the hybrid learning-teaching mode in the web-enhanced Dynarel course and identified pedagogical implications beneficial to students' academic performance and critical thinking skills.