Research on a Blended Teaching Model for Ideological-Political Education in University English Courses Based on BOPPPS: Taking the “Chinese Culture and Traditions” Unit as an Example ()
1. Introduction
The Guidelines for Ideological and Political Education in Higher Education Courses ([2020] No. 3) [1] issued by the Ministry of Education of China explicitly state that comprehensive efforts should be made to advance ideological and political education in courses, integrating value shaping, knowledge transmission, and competency development to fulfill the fundamental mission of fostering virtue and cultivating talent. Against this backdrop, university English—one of China’s most widely taught foundational public courses—holds an indispensable strategic position in the ideological and political education system due to its cross-cultural disciplinary nature and extensive student reach [2]. Specifically, the ideological and political advantages of the university English curriculum manifest in three aspects: First, it inherently provides an international perspective and a platform for cross-cultural comparison, effectively enhancing students’ cultural confidence and identity through dialogue between Chinese and Western civilizations, thereby serving the national strategic need to “tell China’s story well” [3]. Second, mainstream textbooks (e.g., New Target University English) incorporate rich elements of traditional Chinese culture and contemporary social issues, providing an optimal vehicle for seamlessly integrating ideological and political content. Third, language skill training within the curriculum—such as translation, writing, and debate—itself offers practical scenarios for cultivating students’ critical thinking, cultural communication abilities, and patriotic sentiments [4].
Concurrently, the deepening development of educational informatization has established blended learning as the predominant model for university English courses. Platforms like Zhihuishu app and Chaoxingxuexitong app integrate big data and artificial intelligence technologies, not only breaking temporal and spatial constraints to offer personalized learning paths but also creating unprecedented conditions for expanding ideological and political education resources and deepening the learning process. However, ensuring that ideological and political education objectives remain substantive and robust within this complex, alternating online-offline teaching environment—while achieving orderly alignment and simultaneous attainment with language teaching goals—poses a formidable challenge to teachers’ instructional design capabilities.
The BOPPPS teaching model, as a student-centered, rigorously structured instructional design framework, offers a potential solution to this challenge. This model forms a closed-loop instructional cycle through six stages—“Introduction, Objectives, Pre-assessment, Participatory Learning, Post-assessment, and Summary”—emphasizing goal-oriented approaches and continuous interaction. It has been proven to significantly enhance student learning outcomes and classroom engagement [5]. Existing research indicates that applying BOPPPS in blended learning environments optimizes instructional processes [6], while embedding ideological and political elements into professional courses has been shown to strengthen students’ value identification [7]. However, existing research predominantly focuses on either the integration of BOPPPS with blended learning or the incorporation of ideological and political elements within a single teaching mode. There remains a lack of in-depth exploration into systematically integrating the BOPPPS model, blended learning environments, and course-based ideological and political education objectives to construct a replicable and evaluable integrated teaching model.
Therefore, this study targets the university English course for financial engineering majors at a private undergraduate institution in Zhejiang Province. It aims to construct a comprehensive teaching model structured around the BOPPPS framework, implemented through blended online-offline instruction, and centered on ideological and political education as its core value. In contrast to previous studies that predominantly focused on pairwise combinations, the core innovation of this research lies in the systematic integration of the BOPPPS structured process, the spatiotemporal flexibility of blended learning, and the value-oriented objectives of ideological and political education into a trinity framework. This integration not only addresses the issue of “randomness” in the incorporation of ideological and political elements but also ensures the traceability and assessability of ideological education through the closed-loop design of BOPPPS, thereby achieving a qualitative breakthrough at both theoretical and practical levels. Using specific case studies from the “Chinese Culture and Traditions” unit in Comprehensive English 2, this study will elaborate on the model’s construction principles, implementation strategies, and evaluation methods. It seeks to provide theoretical insights and a practical teaching solution to address the challenges of insufficient integration effectiveness and lagging evaluation systems in university English course-based ideological and political education.
2. Literature Review
This study focuses on the integration of the BOPPPS model, ideological and political education in university English courses, and blended learning, aiming to construct a structured teaching framework. Therefore, this chapter will systematically review relevant research in these three core areas, clarify their developmental trajectories, core concepts, and practical models, and ultimately identify gaps in existing research and position this study.
2.1. Theoretical Evolution and Practical Expansion of the BOPPPS
Teaching Model
Originating from Canadian teaching skills workshops in the 1970s, the BOPPPS teaching model is a learner-centered, closed-loop instructional design framework emphasizing interaction and feedback [8]. Its enduring relevance lies in integrating core principles of constructivism, experiential learning theory [9], and the Zone of Proximal Development [10] into a structured process. This framework comprises six interconnected phases—“Bridge-in, Objective, Pre-assessment, Participatory Learning, Post-assessment, and Summary.” This sequence effectively promotes students’ active knowledge construction and deep engagement [11].
In higher education, the adaptability and efficacy of the BOPPPS model have been extensively validated. Researchers applied it to university English instruction, where carefully designed participatory learning activities (e.g., group discussions, role-playing) significantly enhanced students’ classroom engagement and language application skills. With the deep integration of information technology and education, the combination of the BOPPPS model and blended learning has emerged as a new trend. Its structured framework provides a clear pathway for the orderly integration of online self-directed learning and offline classroom interaction [12]. For instance, artificial intelligence technology can assist in creating personalized contexts for the “Introduction” phase and conducting dynamic diagnostic assessments of learning progress during the “Pre-assessment” phase, thereby enhancing teaching efficiency and targeting [13]. Evidently, the BOPPPS model, with its clear structure, strong interactivity, and excellent technological adaptability, provides a reliable framework for systematically integrating ideological and political elements and designing blended learning activities.
2.2. Conceptual Framework and Implementation Pathways for
Ideological and Political Education in University English Courses
Ideological and political education in courses is a strategic initiative to fulfill the fundamental mission of fostering virtue through education. Its core lies in breaking disciplinary barriers in ideological education to achieve the organic integration of knowledge transmission and value guidance [14]. As a public foundation course that combines both instrumental and humanistic functions, university English holds unique advantages in curriculum-based ideological and political education: it serves as a platform for cross-cultural communication and a vital vehicle for telling China’s stories and conveying China’s voice in English [2].
Academic circles have explored multiple typical pathways for integrating ideological and political education into university English courses. One is the theory-driven approach, such as designing language output tasks infused with red cultural connotations based on the “Output-Oriented Approach” (POA), achieving a deep integration of language training and value shaping [15]. The second is the model innovation approach, leveraging blended learning to construct a dual-track model of “online resource immersion + offline thematic exploration,” thereby expanding the temporal and spatial boundaries and presentation forms of ideological and political education. Third is the carrier-based approach, which involves systematically extracting and transforming ideological and political elements from textbooks to achieve seamless integration through optimized content structure [16].
However, current practices still face three major challenges: First, the “two-tiered” phenomenon, where ideological and political elements are insufficiently integrated with language teaching tasks, resulting in forced grafting. Second, shortcomings in teachers’ ideological and political teaching capabilities, with some educators lacking proficiency in transforming ideological materials and implementing them in the classroom [17]. Third, the evaluation system lags behind, lacking effective tools for scientifically quantifying and conducting formative assessments of ideological and political education outcomes [18]. These challenges indicate that integrating ideological and political education into university English courses urgently requires a systematic, assessable instructional design framework like BOPPPS to enhance its integration in terms of systematicity, standardization, and measurability.
2.3. Positioning the Role of Blended Learning in Educational
Informatization
Blended learning is not merely a simple combination of online and offline teaching. Instead, it organically integrates the strengths of face-to-face instruction and online learning to create a more flexible and efficient learning experience [19]. Its core characteristics lie in flexibility, personalization, and collaboration [20]. It effectively addresses practical challenges prevalent in Chinese university English classrooms, such as significant disparities in student proficiency levels and difficulties in meeting individualized needs.
The theoretical foundation of this model is deeply rooted in constructivism and Outcome-Based Education (OBE) principles. Through its closed-loop design— “online knowledge transmission and construction + offline knowledge internalization and application”—it perfectly aligns with the core principle of “learners actively constructing knowledge” [21]. In language instruction, the blended model enhances student engagement and self-directed learning capabilities by providing rich authentic online materials and high-frequency offline interactive scenarios. It also creates ample space for cultivating critical thinking and cultural discernment skills. Thus, the flexible learning spaces and diverse interactive environments created by blended teaching provide an ideal setting for the effective implementation of the BOPPPS model. Simultaneously, they generate more “immersive” rather than “didactic” educational opportunities for course-based ideological and political education.
In summary, existing research lays a solid foundation for this study, yet significant gaps in integration remain: First, research on the BOPPPS model, course-based ideological and political education, and blended learning has largely progressed in parallel. While some studies have explored combinations of two elements, systematic research organically integrating all three into a rigorous model remains insufficient. Second, at the implementation level of ideological and political education in courses, despite diverse approaches, there is a widespread lack of a micro-instructional design framework like BOPPPS that combines structural integrity, interactivity, and assessability. This absence often leads to the arbitrary and ambiguous integration of ideological and political education. Finally, within blended learning environments, leveraging platform data to conduct formative tracking and evaluation of BOPPPS components—particularly the effectiveness of ideological and political education—remains an area requiring deeper exploration. Given these gaps, this study aims to bridge them by constructing a university English teaching model structured around the BOPPPS framework, implemented within blended learning settings, and anchored by ideological and political education as its core value. Through specific unit teaching cases, it elaborates on the model’s construction logic, implementation strategies, and evaluation methods, seeking to provide theoretical references and practical examples for advancing university English course ideological and political education toward more scientific, standardized, and efficient development.
3. Construction of a Blended Learning Model for Ideological
and Political Education in University Integrated English Course Based on BOPPPS
Building upon the aforementioned literature review, this study adheres to the principles of “goal-oriented, student-centered, and ideological-political integration.” It constructs a college integrated English teaching model structured around the BOPPPS framework, deeply integrating blended learning strategies with ideological and political education objectives (see Figure 1). This model aims to overcome the challenges of “artificial integration” of ideological elements and “difficult-to-assess” educational outcomes through systematic instructional design.
Figure 1. BOPPPS-based blended teaching model for ideological-political education in University English Courses.
The construction of this model encompasses four core dimensions:
3.1. Dual-Dimensional Integration of Instructional Goals
The model transcends the singular goal orientation of traditional language teaching by establishing a dual-dimensional instructional goal system integrating “language proficiency” and “ideological and political literacy.” When formulating specific unit objectives, it explicitly lists not only the micro-language skills students must master (listening, speaking, reading, writing), but also concurrently defines the values they must comprehend, embrace, and practice. For instance, discussions on the Belt and Road Initiative cultivate patriotic sentiment and global vision, while financial ethics case studies reinforce professional ethics and social responsibility. This approach aims to achieve synchronized resonance between language learning and value guidance from the outset of instruction.
3.2. Thematic Integration of Instructional Content
Instructional content is thematically restructured around students’ professional background (financial engineering) and national strategic needs. Core themes selected—such as “China’s Economic Miracle,” “Financial Ethics and Social Responsibility,” and “The Modern Value of China’s Outstanding Traditional Culture”—combine contemporary relevance, professional connection, and ideological and political significance. Building on this foundation, diverse texts, audiovisual materials, and online resources are integrated to organically embed and seamlessly blend professional knowledge, English language skills, and ideological elements within thematic contexts.
3.3. Closed-Loop Design of the BOPPPS Teaching Process
The six phases of BOPPPS are meticulously aligned with blended learning timeframes and course-based ideological education objectives, forming a closed-loop teaching system that bridges online and offline environments:
Bridge-in: Online platforms use impactful short videos or real-world cases to create scenarios, sparking student interest in core issues that blend linguistic and ideological dimensions.
Objectives: Clearly state the lesson’s language proficiency goals and ideological education objectives, helping students understand learning expectations and value exploration directions.
Pre-assessment: Utilize online questionnaires or quizzes to diagnose students’ language foundations and initial cognitive states regarding specific values, providing a basis for targeted instruction.
Participatory Learning: The core of this model. Online sessions focus on individual knowledge construction and preliminary critical thinking (e.g., independent inquiry, forum discussions), while offline sessions employ high-frequency interactive activities like group collaboration, scenario simulations, and debates to drive collaborative value analysis and conceptual deepening through language application.
Post-Assessment: Employing diversified evaluation methods, including online tests to verify language knowledge mastery, as well as offline presentations and reflective journals to assess students’ depth of understanding regarding ideological and political content and the internalization of value recognition.
Summary: Faculty and students jointly review the core knowledge points and value essence of the unit, guiding students to connect their learning with personal growth and social responsibility, achieving the sublimation of unity between knowledge and action.
3.4. Collaborative Pathways for Online-Offline Blended Learning
Leverage the distinct strengths of online and offline teaching to create synergistic effects. Online platforms (e.g., Wisdom Tree) primarily handle personalized resource delivery, initial knowledge transfer, asynchronous discussions, and objective data collection. Offline classrooms focus on deep knowledge internalization, advanced skill application, intellectual exchange, and value clarification. This dual-track approach expands learning breadth and depth, enabling the “immersion” of ideological and political education.
3.5. Strategies for Assuring Implementation
To ensure effective implementation of this model, the following key strategies are required:
Resource Synergy Development: Build a digital resource package including micro-lectures, ideological and political case libraries, and online quizzes to ensure alignment between online tasks and offline teaching objectives.
Refined Design of Interactive Activities: All classroom interactions (e.g., debates, role-playing) must incorporate dual-objective design, ensuring they simultaneously train language skills while inevitably prompting students to engage in deep reflection on specific value-related issues.
Multi-dimensional Assessment Framework: Integrate formative and summative evaluations, incorporating online engagement, classroom performance, value expression in assignments, and final exam scores. Prioritize qualitative assessments like reflective journals and project reports to track the progressive development of ideological and political literacy.
Transforming the Teacher Role: Educators must evolve from knowledge disseminators into learning designers, facilitators, and companions in value exploration. Throughout instruction, they deepen students’ cognitive layers and value awareness through immediate feedback, probing questions, and constructive commentary. To prepare instructors for this demanding shift, the following specific, research-grounded professional development activities are recommended: Establish Sustained Teacher Learning Communities, Implement Immersive and Iterative Training Workshops, and Facilitate Apprenticeship and Critical Friendship through Peer Observation.
4. Teaching Case and Practice Reflection: Taking the
“Chinese Culture and Tradition” Unit as an Example
To validate the operability and effectiveness of the aforementioned model, this study conducted a two-week teaching practice using Unit 1 “Understanding Chinese Culture and Tradition” from Integrated English 2 as a case study. The core texts for this unit include Text A: What Can Americans Learn from Confucianism? And Text B: The Oneness of Tea and Zen.
4.1. Case Design Overview
Main Ideological and Political Education Thread: Guide students to deeply understand and embrace Confucian core concepts of “benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, and integrity” and the philosophical ideas embodied in “the oneness of tea and Zen” through a comparative perspective of Chinese and Western cultures, thereby strengthening cultural confidence and cultivating patriotic sentiments.
Model Integration Approach: Using the BOPPPS framework as the clear instructional process skeleton, with the Wisdom Tree platform and offline classrooms as the blended implementation domains, seamlessly embedding course-based ideological and political education as the core value into all teaching segments.
4.2. Instructional Process and Ideological Integration Design
Table 1 details the blended teaching process based on the BOPPPS model and the points of ideological integration.
Table 1. The blended teaching process based on the BOPPPS model and the points of ideological integration.
BOPPPS stages |
Online activities (Zhihuishu APP) |
Offline activities (face-to-face classroom) |
I-P objectives and integrating strategies |
Introduction |
Watch short videos: “The Evolution of the Character ‘Ren’ Through the Ages,” “A Foreign Blogger’s Perspective on China’s ‘Harmony’ Culture”; Participate in discussion: “Which word best represents Chinese culture? Why?” |
Teacher distills key points from online discussion to introduce the unit’s core question. |
Activate prior knowledge to spark initial reflection and interest in core concepts of Chinese culture. |
2. Objectives |
Announce and clarify the unit’s three-dimensional learning objectives: language, thinking, and ideological-political. |
Teachers reiterate objectives, especially ideological-political goals like “understanding the contemporary value of Confucian thought.” |
Ensure value-oriented goals are as visible as language goals, guiding students to consciously explore values. |
3. Pre-Assessment |
Complete questionnaire: knowledge of The Analects, views on Confucianism’s relevance, experiences with tea ceremony culture, etc. |
Teachers analyze survey data to understand student knowledge levels and conceptual starting points. |
Diagnose students’ foundational understanding of traditional culture and potential misconceptions, providing precise entry points for offline value guidance. |
Continued
4. Participatory Learning |
Phase One: Watch the micro-lecture “Core Principles of Confucian Thought,” read Text A, complete reading comprehension, and participate in forum discussion: “How does Confucianism help people become ‘good people’?” |
Phase 2: Activity 1 (Concept Map): Groups map manifestations of “Confucian Harmony” across different dimensions. Activity 2 (Scenario Debate): Debate whether “self-restraint and restoration of ritual propriety” is needed in the digital age. Activity 3 (Cultural Comparison): Contrast “benevolence” with Western individualism. Phase Three: Brief tea ceremony demonstration, discussing its spirit of “quietude, reverence, harmony, and contentment”; Writing task: Complete a paragraph titled “Harmony.” |
Guide students to deeply understand core values like “harmony without uniformity,” “self-discipline and responsibility,” and “cultural distinctiveness” through independent inquiry, collaborative interaction, and experiential reflection, achieving internalization from knowledge acquisition to value recognition. |
5. Post-Assessment |
Complete objective tests on unit vocabulary and grammar. |
Present concept maps/short essays in groups; submit reflective journals: “How has your understanding of traditional Chinese culture changed after studying this unit?” |
Comprehensively evaluate language proficiency and achievement of ideological goals, particularly assessing depth of value internalization and personalized expression through reflective journals. |
6.Summary |
Post a unit summary thread, compiling exemplary reflection journals and model essays. |
Teachers and students jointly review key knowledge points and cultural essence; final question: “As a Chinese university student, how will you inherit and disseminate traditional culture in daily life?” |
Promote the systematization of knowledge and the action-oriented transformation of values, achieving unity of knowledge and practice from classroom learning to real-life application. |
4.3. Teaching Reflection and Case Value
This case successfully translates theoretical models into concrete teaching practices, demonstrating the following strengths and insights:
Structural Advantages: The BOPPPS model ensures rigorous instructional flow and systematic integration of ideological education, avoiding arbitrariness.
Deep Interaction and Value Internalization: Diverse online and offline participatory learning activities—particularly offline debates, comparisons, and experiential exercises—effectively integrate language training with higher-order thinking and value analysis, achieving an “imperceptible” educational impact.
Evaluability: Through multidimensional assessments including pre/post-tests, presentations, and reflective journals, the effectiveness of ideological education is evaluated in a more process-oriented and developmental manner, transcending traditional examinations. Specifically speaking, a thematic analysis can be employed to assess the “internalization of value recognition” evident in the reflective journals, which involved systematically coding the journal entries to identify recurring themes and patterns related to shifts in cultural perspective, personal value connections, and expressed intentions for future actions.
Student feedback and acceptance: The student opinions collected through informal post-class interviews and online platform feedback channels indicate that the vast majority of students have a positive and affirmative attitude towards this blended teaching model. They particularly appreciate the flexibility and richness of online resources, as well as the cultural comparison and value analysis activities based on real situations in the offline classroom. Some students have commented that this course design “no longer confines English learning to language skills training, but becomes a profound experience that inspires thinking and cultivates values.”
Practical challenges primarily stem from heightened demands on instructors’ cultural literacy and real-time classroom guidance capabilities, alongside the difficulty of precisely quantifying ideological outcomes. Recommendations include strengthening collective lesson planning among teaching teams and building ideological resource repositories, while combining formative assessments with qualitative evaluations (e.g., reflective journal analysis) to holistically assess students’ value recognition development.
The value of this case lies in providing a transferable and replicable instructional design paradigm. It demonstrates that systematically integrating the BOPPPS model, blended learning, and course-based ideological and political education can effectively enhance the educational efficacy and academic integrity of university English instruction.
5. Conclusions and Implications
This study established a university English teaching model structured around the BOPPPS framework, deeply integrating blended learning scenarios with ideological and political education objectives, guided by the principles of “goal-oriented, student-centered, and ideological-political integration”. Using the “Chinese Culture and Traditions” unit as a case study, it presented detailed instructional design and practical reflections. It is important to note that the findings and preliminary conclusions of this study are mainly based on the case practice in this specific context. Their effectiveness and generalizability still need to be further verified in a broader and more diverse teaching environment.
The study yielded the following key conclusions:
First, the BOPPPS model’s high degree of structuring provides a viable solution to the challenges of “insufficient integration effectiveness” and “lagging evaluation systems” in ideological and political education within university English courses. Its closed-loop instructional design, comprising six interconnected phases, ensures that ideological and political elements are no longer random, isolated “additional annotations”. Instead, they become an organic component running parallel to language teaching objectives and permeating the entire teaching process. Case practice demonstrates that through “pre-assessment” to diagnose learning conditions, “participatory learning” to promote value internalization, and “post-assessment” to evaluate comprehensive outcomes, the model systematically achieves the organic integration of “knowledge transmission, competency development, and value guidance”.
Second, the integration of blended learning environments with the BOPPPS model creates a synergistic educational space characterized by “online knowledge construction and offline value deepening”. Online platforms (such as Wisdom Tree) serve as vehicles for personalized delivery of ideological resources and asynchronous critical discourse, while offline classrooms leverage advanced interactive activities—including group debates, cultural comparisons, and experiential learning—to achieve deep exploration of ideological topics and elevate emotional resonance. This dual-track integration effectively expands the breadth, depth, and flexibility of ideological education.
Furthermore, the successful implementation of this model imposes higher demands on teachers’ role positioning and comprehensive competencies. Educators must transition from mere knowledge disseminators to meticulous designers of teaching activities, profound facilitators of classroom interactions, and companions in value alignment. This requires not only solid language teaching skills but also profound cross-cultural literacy, precise grasp of ideological elements, and dynamic classroom guidance wisdom.
Although this study preliminarily validates the model’s feasibility and effectiveness, certain limitations remain. On one hand, the case study originates from a single institution’s specific discipline, with limited sample size and representativeness, necessitating further validation of its generalizability across broader teaching contexts. On the other hand, while qualitative methods like reflective journals and classroom presentations were employed to assess ideological and political education outcomes, the development of quantitative evaluation systems—particularly regarding the collection and analysis of online ideological and political interaction data—remains exploratory. The reliability and validity of these systems require ongoing refinement through more advanced learning analytics technologies.
Based on this, future research may be expanded in the following directions:
1) Deepening Empirical Research: Apply this model across a broader range of institutions, majors, and courses. By establishing control groups, conducting teaching experiments, and collecting large-scale questionnaire and interview data, employ mixed-methods research combining quantitative and qualitative approaches to provide more persuasive empirical evidence on the model’s effectiveness in enhancing students’ language proficiency and ideological and political literacy.
2) Exploring Intelligent Assessment: Leverage learning behavior data accumulated on blended learning platforms to explore the use of Learning Analytics and artificial intelligence technologies. This would enable intelligent tracking and quantitative analysis of students’ cognitive levels in ideological and political education and their trajectories of value recognition as demonstrated in forum discussions and reflective journals. The goal is to construct a more scientific and dynamic formative assessment system for ideological and political literacy.
3) Promoting Teacher Development: Subsequent research may focus on developing professional development pathways for foreign language teachers through the three-dimensional empowerment of “BOPPPS-Blended Learning-Curriculum-based Ideological and Political Education.” This includes designing corresponding teacher training courses and establishing professional learning communities to systematically enhance teachers’ ideological and political theoretical literacy, instructional design capabilities, and digital teaching proficiency, thereby providing talent support for the sustainable promotion of this model.
The systematic integration of the BOPPPS model, blended learning, and curriculum-based ideological and political education represents a valuable exploration to enhance the educational effectiveness of university English instruction. Future research, grounded in more robust empirical foundations, intelligent evaluation tools, and professional faculty development, will undoubtedly propel the curriculum-based ideological and political education in university English courses toward deeper, more standardized, scientific, and efficient development.
Acknowledgements
This paper is one achievement of Zhejiang Provincial-Level Online-Offline Blended First-Class Course: Comprehensive English 2.