Balancing online and face-to-face teaching and learning activities

The core of university course design is the selection and combination of Teaching and Learning Activities (TLAs). TLAs may involve various types of interaction, either face-to-face or with and through media. Traditional media such as books are increasingly being supplemented with many types of online media such as short video presentations known as knowledge clips. Wageningen University introduced knowledge clips to several second-year Food Technology courses, partially shifting from face-to-face interactions to online activities that facilitate acquiring, inquiring and practicing. Student questionnaires and a student group interview were used to reveal differences in student preferences towards knowledge clips and the other TLAs. Knowledge clips seem to be valuable parts of courses and work well in general, although students prefer to combine them with some face-to-face interaction. Besides individual preference, there seem to be two main reasons for this: (1) watching a large number of clips requires a considerable amount of discipline and a face-to-face meeting during the course is an intermediate goal to work towards, and (2) when knowledge clips are more difficult and raise questions, students prefer to work in a room with access to a teacher