The Blended Learning Ecosystem of an Academic Institution in Greece

Blended learning has been recognized as the most promising emerging trend in higher education, offering new capabilities, as it may significantly enhance the interaction and communication between instructors and students. The challenge of blended learning is to balance the weaknesses and strengths of face-to-face and e-learning teaching environments and effectively combine them to provide enhanced learning capabilities. Its success should benefit instructor-student relation. To this end, we adopt ecosystem-based approach to model the blended learning environment and identify its constituents (instructors, students, consultants, technology) and their evolving relations. The proposed concept was utilized to explore the potential of blended learning in the academic environment. A study was conducted in Harokopio University of Athens over a period of three years to explore the relations between blended learning ecosystem constituents, focusing on instructor -student relation. Towards this direction, students and faculty members participated in the study on a voluntary basis. The methodology applied, data analysis and major observations deduced are discussed in the paper.