Effect of blended learning strategy on critical thinking and social skills of students with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder

Abstract

Blended learning is rapidly growing and widely accepted advanced instructional strategy which provides better opportunities and advantages to the students to collaborate, to cooperate, to communicate, to reason and to experience critical debate, which ultimately facilitate greater reflection, autonomy, self efficacy and social interaction on the part of learners. The major objective of the present research was to study the effect of blended learning strategy on critical thinking and social skills of students with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). This experimental study employed a pretest-posttest control group experimental design. A sample of 80 students with ADHD was selected from 4 schools of Amritsar city and divided randomly into two groups: experimental group and control group. The experimental group was taught with blended learning strategy and the control group was taught with traditional method of teaching for 50 working days. Critical thinking scale and social skills rating scale were administered to the collect the data. Data was analysed by using statistical technique of independent samples t-test. The results reveal that the students with ADHD taught through blended learning strategy exhibited better performance in the critical thinking and social skills gain scores as compared to the students taught through traditional method of teaching. The findings clearly indicate that the blended learning strategy proved effective and beneficial in promoting critical thinking and social skills of student with ADHD. newline