CREATING A VIRTUAL COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE THROUGH BLENDED LEARNING IN TEACHER EDUCATION IN SOUTHWEST NIGERIAN UNIVERSITIES

Abstract

To lessen the impact of the escalating coronavirus pandemic, terrorism, and the reduction in students' academic performance, schools worldwide are switching from onsite to online instruction and adopting digital learning platforms in teacher training. Establishing a virtual community of practice with the support of blended learning and digital learning platforms is necessary to give teachers the practical tools they need in terms of perceived improvements to their teaching abilities and their thorough understanding of their core topic. However, Nigeria's universities have the most difficulty converting their teacher education programmes to online ones. This study looked at the virtual community of practice through blended learning in southwest Nigerian universities (colleges or faculties of education). The study was conducted in stages and used a quasi-experimental design with a control group for the pre-test and post-test. The respondents were divided into experimental and control groups, and the researcher will select the groups with simple, stratified, and purposeful sampling approaches. The sample comprises 92 academic staff members and 252 Bamidele Olumilua University of Education, Science, and Technology students in Ikere, Ekiti, and the Tai Solarin University of Education in Ijebu-Ode. The Virtual Community of Practice results through the Blended Learning in Teachers Education Test (VCPBLTET) were used to evaluate the performance of the 200-level Education Foundation Courses (EFC) students during the academic year 2022-2023. The questionnaire was used to draw responses from the lecturers, while statistical software assessed the collected data. All hypotheses are evaluated at a significance level of 0.05. The findings derived from the study revealed how lecturers in southwest Nigerian universities decided which blended learning implementation method was best for teacher education programs. The study also showed that teacher educators who engage in blended learning to create a virtual community of practice have significantly different professional development outcomes. The findings support the notion that face-to-face and virtual interactions substantially impact how effective blended learning strategies are for training teachers. The study's results confirm that a significant amount of the variation in the use of technology in the classroom can be explained by the predictor variable and its combination. Personal obligations outside the classroom, such as side gigs, also take up teachers' engagement. As a result, vital structural components must be arranged for blended learning to integrate properly into the community of practice.

Keywords: virtual community of practice, blended learning, preservice teachers, universities, Southwest Nigeria