Analyzing The Interactions of Educational Elements In Face-To-Face, Electronic And Blended Learning Communities: Qualitative Phenomenology

In recent years, significant and extensive changes have occurred in the field of education. The paradigm of teaching to learning is changing. In this paradigm shift, instead of emphasizing direct, static and single-media education, the center of gravity of educational processes has changed to dynamic, multimedia and non-simultaneous education, and its operational impact on the emergence and development of the species Different types of learning community such as e-learning and blended learning have been revealed. In fact, even before the global pandemic emergency, the use of digital technologies and electronic education was expanding. But with the beginning of the outbreak of Covid-19, the importance of the development and application of electronic and blended education became more evident and its universal and mandatory use became challenging for some developing countries. In fact, it may be possible to continue the education process without physical presence, but the idea of ​​learning without interaction is absurd, and the complex and long-term process of learning with the aim of acquiring or improving information, skills, competences or behaviors requires extensive hidden and open communication between elements. It is educational. The most important of these elements from Anderson's point of view are teacher, learner and content, and their complex relationships in the context of education create six types of interaction: learner with learner, learner with learner, learner with content, learner with content, learner with learner and content with content.The creation of a global urgency to use electronic education has led many researches to this field, and the issue of interaction in this type of education has been investigated more than other learning communities; But considering the importance of educational interactions and its role in various learning environments, it is necessary to explore these interactions in traditional, electronic and blended education in comparison with each other, in order to have a more accurate understanding of the quality of each interaction in different types. To have a more reasonable and deliberate use of education, any of the traditional, electronic and blended learning environments in educational centers, schools and universities. This logic prompted the researcher to conduct a qualitative phenomenological research to analyze the life experience of English language teachers regarding the interactions of educational elements in three experienced traditional, combined and electronic education and to answer these questions: English language teachers' life experience of the interactions of elements How has education been in the traditional, electronic and blended learning community? What interactions happened in each of the communities and what are the concerns about the interaction of educational elements for English teachers? This qualitative research is applied in terms of purpose and was conducted with Klaizeri descriptive phenomenological analysis method.Experience in all three types of face-to-face, electronic and combined training was the basis for selecting participants in the research and conducting face-to-face semi-structured interviews. The process of gathering information continued until the repetition of propositions, concepts and theoretical saturation. The studied population consisted of all the English language instructors of Fouladshahr language schools in the academic year of 1401-1400, from which 15 people were selected by purposeful sampling. To ensure the content validity of the instrument, experts' opinions were used and to confirm the reliability, the intra-subject agreement method (0.82) was used. Data analysis was carried out based on the seven-step Klaizeri model and with the help of max-qda 2020 software. The lived experiences expressed in response to the research questions indicated that there were the most interactions of educational elements from the point of view of the instructors, respectively, in combined, traditional and electronic education. In such a way that the analysis of the life experiences of the educators in response to the first question about educational interactions in traditional education showed that the interaction of learner-learner, learner-learner and learner-written content formed the highest amount of interactions in traditional education respectively. But the lack of content-content interactions, the lack of teacher-learner interactions to share experiences, and the difficulty of teacher-content interaction to update information were emphasized by the participants in the research. Learner-learner, learner-content and learner-content interactions had the most themes in e-learning interactions, respectively. Among the interactions that were mentioned in electronic education, despite its lack in traditional education, was content-content interaction. In response to the third question of the research, the learner's interaction with classmates and with the content had the highest amount of interactions in combined education.In explaining the findings, it can be stated that along with the growth of some types of interaction in a learning environment, the need to evaluate other interaction options increases; because the maximum presence of all types of interaction reduces educational risks for learners and all learning elements. Based on the findings, blended learning community combines the merits of both face-to-face and electronic learning methods by providing educational content with easy access, supported by opportunities for live emotional interaction between learners and teachers. In fact, blended learning represents a fundamental change in the interactions of educational elements; because it does not limit these interactions between one or two elements and can optimize interactions in a way that was not possible in traditional and electronic education. Blended learning allows people to learn different materials by taking advantage of the required interaction with different visual, auditory, kinesthetic or a combination of all of them. The simultaneous use of different logical, interactive and individual learning styles by learners in order to understand the concepts makes it possible for every part of the education to be transmitted with the most appropriate media. Using social media to share and compare knowledge, encourage and demonstrate the effective use of newly learned skills, along with face-to-face training, significantly strengthens interaction and learning and fills the gaps in understanding concepts. Also, improving content-content and learner-content interactions in blended learning eliminates time limitations and increases the speed of learning while reducing transportation costs. By managing time, the learner engages mentally with the content at the right time, and this self-control helps the person interact with the content.Finally, it can be acknowledged that maybe it is not possible to completely return to face-to-face learning due to many reasons; Therefore, it is suggested that, in order to transition from the traditional educational system to the modern educational system, blended education should be given more attention, and by providing educational infrastructure, creating favorable changes in the attitudes and traditional roles of educational administrators and learners, providing equipment technology and the cultivation of specialized human resources, this learning community will be strengthened; In order to prevent postponement in education and by guaranteeing interpersonal interactions, the field of entry into all-electronic education for adults or job training will be provided.