SWOT Analysis of Blended Learning in Public Universities of Uganda: A Case Study of Muni University

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Nice research on the Ugandan situation when it comes to - well what? This is important - if conceptual clarity on basic terms is unclear or somewhat missing, a whole lot of research work that builds on a fragile foundation can be wasted. You are far from alone in this - a lot of the blended learning literature just supposes that there is a, and just one, clear meaning of the term. But OK, your paper is not conceptual and is no worse than a lot of other stuff on the same subject, and the weaknesses are fixable so the value of your research work can be seen with fewer flaws. 

"Blended learning" seems to stand for, in your case,

a) A method of teaching and learning by using "technology" especially digital, in combination with traditional methods of teaching and learning. There is hardly any BL method - but there are good ways to use ICTs to improve teaching in courses and hopefully also learning.

b) any designed use of ICT in teaching and learning.

When you use the word "fusion", I think you are on the right track. Teaching and learning have always used technology and is also contentwise a lot about human technology (reading, writing, maths to start with) for minimizing information friction. This is not any revolution in itself - the digital teaching-learning revolution is still to come (adaptive learning as an example - using the real digital power of ICTs - information processing outside biological brains).

As for example these quotes in your paper (line 9-11) - create more clarity by changing it, please: 

"With the fusion of ICT in higher institutions of learning, the quality of teaching-learning has increased and improved exponentially. This gave rise to blended learning (BL) allowing students and lecturers to interact with educational resource regardless of their location."

Do you in any way "know" this, or do you presuppose that everyone knows or at least thinks like this? It is not easy to show in any clear way that quality of teaching-learning" has improved, research has shown. By the term "exponentially", the reader can think that you have this increase and improvement of learning as a demonstrated and calculated, measured truth, but misses the references. If only it was that good - but it isn't. You should know that as being well oriented in the BL literature- Your claim is bold and unsubstantiated, even if you (and I) want it to be true.  How did the "fusion" then "give rise" to "blended learning"? Hard to understand. Are they not almost the same, the fusion of ICTs into traditional practice - and blended learning - developing this fusion? Is it different levels of maturity of practice we are discussing? Remember that we have no credible "blended learning pedagogy" formulated and accepted.  This introduction has merits as well - by use of the term "fusion" and by use of the "teaching-learning" concept. You can easily develop this by using as for example Vygotskij's "obuchenie" concept - when teaching and learning works, they are one integrated activity. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.707.5026&rep=rep1&type=pdf  Can I suggest something better? "With the fusion of ICT in higher institutions of learning, new teaching and learning practices have developed, often called blended learning, allowing students and teachers to interact with information and each other more independently of both place and time by the lowering of information friction." 

Another reflection here: the reader should perhaps be informed how the "base-line" looked in Ugandan universities before any digital technologies came into designed use. You mention academic faculty as "lecturers", not often "teachers". Does that implicate that Ugandan teaching was almost completely lecture-based and very little interactive before use of ICTs? 

Otherwise, I find your literature review rather rich and at least acceptable, and your research questions sound. The method of using SWOT overall is also, in its simplicity, good for the purpose. The statistic work I am no expert on, I hope the other reviewer is, but it looks fine to me. The discussion and conclusion are also fine. 

I think your paper can be very useful in Uganda and in some neighbour countries in Africa. To improve the interest for other readers internationally, please see if you can add a small section of national context. How big is the Ugandan university system? Both public and private? education levels, ongoing expansion plans? Nr of students, staff, recent successes and problems... That would be very valuable to people that do not know the Ugandan university sector (or Uganda at all). And also - papers originating from in-place research in non-Anglo-Saxian countries can increase their number of readers by being more "exotic" - describing the world "outside". Sorry to say. That applies for example to Scandinavian countries as well. 

So I recommend making some minor revisions to this article. Please also let some native-English-speaker/writer go through the text. I see that there are a number of small mistakes here and there, even f I am not a native English-speaker/writer myself. And also check names of authors, as for example Vaughn on line 216 should be Vaughan. 

Author Response

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Reviewer 2 Report

Ali et al – SWOT analysis of blended learning in Uganda

This is a very timely paper given the current international focus on blended learning (BL); its benefits and challenges and implications for institutions embracing this mode of teaching. There is a good introduction with clear signposting, and a comprehensive literature review that is used to design an evidence-based questionnaire. Given the fact that the authors are looking at intentions to use BL, and the SWOT analysis, there is inevitably some overlap between the two sections; however I don’t feel this is a major issue. The results are clearly presented and there is good linkage of findings to the existing literature in the discussion.

In terms of ways to improve this work, I have some general and specific comments.

General comments:
Can you provide a stronger rationale for using SWOT as a methodology? Somewhere you say that this has been used in similar e-learning studies – accompanying references would be helpful.
I feel the discussion could be expanded slightly to draw out the implications for Muni university and also Ugandan (and indeed worldwide) universities a bit more – the authors do this to some extent on page 17 but I feel it’s minimal.
I’d also like to see limitations of the study acknowledged in the discussion.
The paper would benefit from proof-reading by someone with English as a first language; there are some words misused, and the punctuation is inconsistent.
There are some inconsistencies in the referencing – sometimes the authors are referred to as well as the number, but most times just the number. I much prefer author-date to numerical referencing for this reason but that’s the journal style presumably. Some consistency would be good.

Specific comments:
Title – this is a study of one university (Muni) and therefore the title needs to reflect this.
Introduction – include page number in in-text citations for quotes (but check journal style).
Line 45-46 – I’m not sure of the relevance of the three main models of blended learning; either explain or omit.
Line 88 – replace ‘old’ for ‘existing’
Line 94 – training for staff – what does this involve? Is there a focus on academic development i.e. using Moodle in pedagogically effective ways, and/or technological training?
Line115-116 – There is an argument that the course design should support knowledge transmission and skills acquisition. I personally feel that e-learning should also encourage conceptual change i.e. higher order thinking, rather than just information transmission (see papers by Trigwell and Prosser on information transfer teacher-centred approaches versus conceptual change student-centred approaches. In practice a mixture of both is usually appropriate).
Line 128 – change ‘move’ for ‘motivate’
Line 162 – ‘treatment and actions’ is vague; consider wording.
Line 174-175 – Various pedagogical models – which ones?
Line 183 – change ‘accesssion’ for ‘addition’
Line 189 – Take out word ‘For’
Line 226 – ‘the varying method’ – vague wording
Line 232 – did you mean that BL lessens the price and time, rather than heighten (increase)?
Line 267-268 – page timed out is the same as slow internet accessibility
Line 274 – I would not make reference to the Ugandan context here because this is a general lit review
Line 304 – no available documentation – what type? Just needs clarified.
Line 319 – I use Internet rather than cyberspace but it’s personal preference
Line 336 – reference to ‘studies’ rather than ‘a study’ (several cited)
Methods –
Line 368 – replace ‘valid and reliable’ for ‘evidence-based’
Line 379 – I would take out the equation for calculating the sample size as it’s not helpful.
Line 393 – what was the total population size, or number of people that you specifically sampled? Need to know this to report the response rate. Also, you mention random stratified sampling in the abstract but not here – please add further information here.
Line 4-5 – no student had used BL for more than three years – I would have expected this since it probably reflects their time at university
Tables 2 to 6 – you report the mean and standard deviation here. For ordinal (Likert scale) data it is more correct the report the median and inter-quartile range and that’s my preference, though there is a some debate about this. How do you decide which results are worth highlighting i.e. above what score? That needs clarified, perhaps in the methods. It’s also my personal preference to report percentages in full integers but again it’s personal preference.

Discussion –
Line 486-487 – you say the main aim is the SWOT analysis, but actually you start out to address two research questions; maybe also highlight intentions here too.
Line 513 – ‘blended learning can help many students in a short time’ – it may be wording but I wasn’t sure that the results supported this.

References –
Are references 45 and 52 the same?

I think if you can make these changes, the paper will be stronger for it. Good luck in making these changes and I look forward to seeing the paper in print in due course.

Author Response

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Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Good work. I am happy with the changes.

Author Response

Thanks for the good work done

Reviewer 2 Report

Many thanks for incorporating some of the recommended changes. I think there are still some minor inconsistencies in the grammar that I will let the journal staff comment on (e.g. capital letters in the middle of sentences), and there are some references that you refer to just as numbers and others where you use the author names as well.

I’d suggest that you include the word ‘case study’ in the title. Where you mention that the study seeks to examine SWOT in public universities, you might want to clarify that the study seeks to to do this in one university (MU) to draw implications for other public universities in Uganda, e.g. RQ2, and lines 378, 384, 544.

Muni University is defined as MU on line 90 - you could just refer to it as MU from there on in.

Line 109 - include numbered references to articles that use SWOT analysis.

Line 224 - As far as I am aware, Moodle is only available online, so that sentence may require slight rewording.

Line 246 - lessen not lessens

Line 282 - technical not technicality

Line 294 - unnecessary comma in title

Line 361 - take out reference to ‘legal’ 

Line 402 - would suggest taking out ‘statistically’, could say results above 3 were deemed significant

Line 569 - again I wasn’t sure if this sentence was evidenced by the results but it may be I’ve just missed something.

Well done on a really comprehensive study, which will be of significant interest to educators globally.

Author Response

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