4. Discussion and conclusion
The purpose of this study was to explore the student experience of blended learning in a first year university course in order to better understand why some students are more successful than others. An important goal of the study is to discover evidence for teachers and education leaders to help inform decisions about teaching and course design in blended learning environments which are likely to improve the quality of student learning. Before discussing the results in detail, it is worth noting some limitations of the study. The research site involves one university course with a population sample of 211 in undergraduate engineering. To test the robustness of the associations that revealed qualitative variation in the student experience, similar studies involving different disciplines and larger sample sizes are required to test the subject-specificity of the conclusions and overall sample size underpinning conclusions. In addition, the results are taken from a student perspective. Complementary studies adopting a teacher perspective would help to round out legitimate concerns about variables that contribute to the quality of student learning. These need to be conducted across a number of disciplines in order to account for disciplinary variation (see for example Jokinen & Mikkonen, 2013). These limitations notwithstanding, the results provide interesting and valuable implications for the design of courses and digital learning environments.
