The Development of Blended-Learning Teaching Portfolio Course Using TBL Approach

Introduction

The Indonesian higher education is currently under pressure to demonstrate its effectiveness. Additionally, the Indonesian higher education faces issues in its teaching and learning process in order to maintain educational standards and student proficiency outcomes. Specifically, simply passing a course is no longer sufficient; students need to have more active roles during the learning process.

Teaching techniques at a particular university is typically dominated by the lectures. This teaching technique detracts from a student’s ability to analyze information critically. A repercussion of this is the student tendency to become demotivated in learning to improve knowledge; the focus of enrolling in a class becomes merely to prepare for an exam and achieve a certain grade. This point of view regarding the purpose of a course renders the effectiveness of a course to be moot. To counter this lackluster attitude, students should be taught to analyze problems presented in class through discussions that can develop and improve their skills. The discussions must include collaborations from all members of the class rather than allowing for discussions to be dominated by one or a select few of students, ensuring that everyone in the class garners similar levels of knowledge and skills.

One of the teaching techniques to fix the aforementioned problems is the use of blended learning in both teaching and learning activities. Blended learning is defined as the combination of in-person and online learning. Improvement in teaching practices is expected through the creative and innovative use of technology, enhancing the benefits of online learning delivery. As for in-person teaching activities, instructional strategy such as Team-Based Learning (TBL) can provide opportunities for developing teamwork capabilities and enhancing active learning. TBL is one of the student-centered learning approaches and is designed to provide students with both conceptual and procedural knowledge.

At the university level, a course in management encompasses the teaching of techniques and methods to handle the responsibility of managing a company or organization. Related to the technique, hands-on experience through knowledge application in real situations (or a simulation of it) is important to hone this skill further. One of the subjects in a management course that requires the mastery of concepts through experience in solving cases is the International Human Resource Management (IHRM), a course that comprises basic concepts of human resource management internationalization including strategic context, national and culture context, global talent management, the roles and future in IHRM. This course gives students knowledge related to managing human resources in multinational enterprises to enhance their performance. A Human Resource Management course is a prerequisite for enrolling in this course.

This study was conducted based on research that indicate blended learning approach presents an effective platform to use different pedagogical strategies, and has the potential to maximize the benefits of both in-person and online learning (Wu, Tennyson, & Hsia, 2010). Collaborations between different pedagogy and teaching strategies have been considered good practice for many years. Lectures are no longer standard in a monotonous way since teaching classes involve more interactions, case studies, group work, student presentations, simulations, and other types of learning activities (Williams, 2002). A study conducted by Boyle, Bradley, Chalk, Jones, and Pickard (2003) in the United Kingdom confirms that blended learning can improve learning outcomes. Also in the United Kingdom, a review of its literature and practice commissioned by the Higher Education Academy concludes that overall students are very positive about blended learning (Sharpe, Benfield, Roberts, & Francis, 2006). In addition, students’ interaction and overall satisfaction have been shown to improve through blended learning (DeLacey & Leonard, 2002). This study was conducted to develop a teaching portfolio that can help lecturers maximize the benefits of blended learning (both in-person and online learning) through the use of TBL teaching and learning approach. Thus, this article focused on the development of a teaching portfolio for a course in IHRM with blended learning and TBL teaching approach.