In the Search for the Golden Mean: Students` Satisfaction with Face-to-Face, Blended and Distance Learning

Abstract

At the present time, digital educational technologies are gradually being introduced into the sectors of education aimed at the complex competencies that combine psychomotor skills and soft skills. Particularly, special tactical police training is aimed at the formation of specific police skills of tactical progression, disposition, communication, as well as decision-making and problem-solving skills. Considering the prevailing tendency in post-Soviet countries to use traditional apprenticeship in police special tactical training, the most justified is the implementation of the concept of cognitive apprenticeship. This concept, on the one hand, allows to create such complex police skills for an unpredictable, chaotic workplace environment, as decision-making and problem-solving, and on the other hand, is based on the teaching experience accumulated by instructors. The important outcome of the orientation of police training on soft skills by the above approaches is the satisfaction of students. In this regard, the study examines the levels of academic satisfaction from traditional, blended, and distance learning. Distance learning was implemented during quarantine due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The study found a higher degree of the students` satisfaction with blended learning than satisfaction with face-to-face and satisfaction with distance learning.