Experts' Insights About Blended Learning Implementation: What Teacher Attributes are Relevant?

Higher education already values blended learning as an alternative way of teaching and learning for various reasons. Nonetheless, the implementation of blended learning remains a challenging and difficult process. Many (f)actors play a role, ranging from policies and organizational culture (e.g. ICT policy plan, professionalization strategies, leadership style) to different personal teacher aspects such as ICT literacy, teaching style, openness to change or personal motivation. In any case, the teacher remains crucial in processes of educational change. This qualitative study therefore focuses on the teacher perspective by investigating and identifying teacher attributes that play an important role when implementing blended learning. Since experts have deep insights in aggregated and specific knowledge, a research approach of expert interviews was chosen. Twelve experts on blended learning in Flemish higher education were interviewed in order to identify what they perceive as relevant teacher attributes. Four attributes, rooted in intrinsic teacher motivation, emerge from the preliminary analyses: (1) a genuine concern with the quality of their teaching practice; (2) realizing a pedagogical need for change; (3) being able to critically reflect on their teaching practice; and (4) having a sense of pedagogical curiosity and creativity to explore technology in relation to learning processes. Additionally, the experts raised a number of cognitive teacher biases that hinder the uptake of blended learning. In particular a confirmation, vividness and omission bias towards the concept of blended learning were denominated by the experts. Insights from this study informs practitioners concerned with implementation and deliberate application of blended learning in higher education. Finally, recommendations for research and practice will be presented and discussed.