Digital Ethnography Divide and Blended Learning Practices

Background

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought major disasters to humankind and the worst medical crisis across the world which forced down a series of lockdowns, loss of human lives and livelihoods, and putting the industrial and service sectors to halt. The halt to such sectors has imposed several operational restrictions which gave rise to new approaches for their operations. One of the significant transformations in the operational procedures of industrial and service sectors are compulsory digital adoptions and work from home (WFH) approaches for the desired outcomes (Shammi et al., 2021). Facing the worst crisis due to COVID-19 syndrome, the education sector has become the most challenging and worst-hit sector across the globe and has faced teaching-learning challenges at all levels of education around the world. The worst scenario in education is the result of the abrupt switch to digital learning and assessment procedures which has eroded away the natural physical classroom learning strategies and made digital and remote learning a new-normal from just an option a while back. To acclimatize with the new-normal teaching-learning environment has brought significant changes in the perceptions of both the teachers and learners, and to cope with the new-normal situations has compelled them to apply extra efforts towards digital adoptions and bringing physical classroom essence into the digital/online and virtual classroom to make the convenient and effective teaching-learning process and derive the expected outcomes (Habibi, 2021). Due to the critical issues of the digital divide because of the significant number of digitally marginalized learners across the globe which constantly posed threats for mass exclusion from education among the digitally marginalized sections, efforts have been made to keep the standard of education high during these challenging times, to make the teaching-learning process compatible with digital infrastructure/access, and to keep physical classroom activities intact in virtual mode, the education sector has adopted blended learning and alternative assessment practices as better practices for quality learning and desired outcomes (Vassilakopoulou and Hustad, 2021). In context to language classrooms, communication skills and assessment has been a central focus of the instructional process. As far as communication in language classrooms is concerned, it is essential to have active dialogue exchange for best practices in reading and speaking skills. It is said that listening and writing skills are said to be equally effective in both the offline and online classes but, there is no substitute for physical classrooms for effective teaching and learning of writing and listening skills because physical classroom environments provide critical thinking abilities and interactive skills which is the motive behind language classrooms (Cummins, 2007). With the surge in COVID-19 pandemic, schools, colleges, and universities across the world switched to the blended learning approach. Blended learning existed years before the covid era, and it is the blend of traditional physical classroom instruction along with the elements of online instruction for when the students attend classroom with the teacher. Blended learning aims to provide students the best of blend having face-to-face and online learning experiences. Blended learning in the classroom consists of face-to-face instruction techniques including lectures, group discussions, group assignments along with the digital technology interference providing in-class online learning which students can also do at home provided they have appropriate digital technology access (Singh et al., 2021). With the surge in using blended learning, assessment for learning (formative assessment) has gained significant importance which re-shaped the evaluation system in the new normal. The adopted assessment strategy in the blended learning environment is alternative assessment methods. The combination of blended learning and alternative assessment methods has evolved as the most appropriate approach for effective learning, especially during the pandemic era. Alternative assessment is famously known as formative assessment methods which are said to be an assessment for learning which is carried out throughout the semester or academic session, rather than a term-end assessment of learning. During the pandemic period, the formative assessment practices mostly were digital due to virtual or remote learning (Rajaram, 2021).