Pedagogy of Petroleum English Course, Part A: Comparing the Performance, Perception, and Satisfaction Between MOOC-Based Blended and In-Person Modalities Among Chinese Students

Abstract

As Chinese and foreign oil and gas companies are expanding their activities internationally, the exigency for professionals with strong knowledge in English is of utmost importance. While a massive open online course MOOC-based blended learning modality has received widespread academic recognition across different fields. Its application in a Petroleum English course is unexplored, and its educational merits among Chinese undergraduate engineering students remain unclear. This study assesses the effectiveness of face-to-face learning modality and MOOC-based blended learning modality based on academic performance, students' perceptions, and learning satisfaction among Chinese sophomore year engineering students in the petroleum English course. A group of students of similar ages, gender, and academic background, and taught using distinctive lecturing modalities [ca., face-to-face learning modality (IM, n = 218), and blended learning modality (BM, n = 216)], was compared. It was revealed that the final mean grade of BM was higher than that of IM (75 ± 6.99 for IM versus 78.85 ± 7.76 for BM, with P <.05). The spatial distribution pattern revealed that students taught via BM achieved a higher mean grade in comparison to those of IM, regardless of the subcategories (ca. top 10%, upper middle 20%, lower middle 60%, and bottom 10%) based on the Wilcoxon Rank Sum test. Moreover, the Spearman test best describes the relationship between the face-to-face quiz grades and final examination grades (R2 = 0.532, P<.01) than the Pearson test (R2 = 0.207, P<.01). It was obvious from these results that the majority of students did not only agree or strongly agreed that the BM improved their learning competencies in various aspects, but also that the learning format was the most preferred (60.5%) in comparison to face-to-face learning alone (28.9%) and online learning alone (10.9%). According to these results, BM clearly contributed to fostering students’ performance, perception, and satisfaction compared to purely IM in petroleum English course.