Current Trends in Blended and Online Learning

Blended Learning (BL) combines the advantages of both in-person and online learning while allowing students to affect their learning schedules and take responsibility. The capabilities of online education took worldwide interest during the COVID-19 pandemic, with the need to better understand online education's impact on educational achievements and how technical environments could provide learning experiences to replace face-to-face sessions at the campus. We examine the trends towards online learning on the recently published articles during the COVID-19 pandemic, comparing them to a learning survey conducted in the European Union in 2021. The study's objective is to identify the current trends and the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on online education. This paper compares our findings from a systematic literature review against the trends observed from qualitative survey data collected from six European countries. Our mapping study identified several trends, such as that long-distance education had become a long-term strategy in higher education compared to the pre-COVID-19 era and that fully online education can be very exhausting for students, causing retention problems with those who need more skills for independent studies. The BL methods engage students and allow them to design their learning schedules, and after COVID-19, these methods are becoming long-term strategies for education. However, these approaches also require skills in the course design to ensure that other aspects and needs, such as social inclusiveness to motivate students, are sufficiently addressed due to the need for classroom interactions and peer support from shared campus experiences.