Balancing heterogeneous levels through the application of blended learning – a practice example from the degree programmes at Nuertingen-Geislingen University

Universities are required to deal to a greater extent with heterogeneous levels especially in basic subjects such as mathematics, statistics, languages or writing skills on undergraduate level due to increasingly varying entry levels. This also applies to graduate and post-graduate degrees, as students are recruited more and more from semi-cognate or non-cognate degrees. Weekly face-to-face teaching often fails to enable students with heterogeneous levels to acquire the necessary knowledge and skills without over challenging weaker students and under challenging good students. The integration of e-learning components in the form of blended learning provides opportunities to balance these differences and enables weaker students to catch up at their pace. As a best practice model, the language programme at Nuertingen-Geislingen shows how students with largely varying levels of English language skills at entry level enhance their language proficiency skills through the introduction of blended learning. In addition to the success factors, but also, challenges and potential difficulties are presented. Even though the model is applied in the language programme, it can be easily transferred to other subject fields, especially the basic subject fields listed above.