Renewing Introductory Management Courses in Higher Vocational Colleges through Blended Teaching: The Roles of Digital Literacy and Learning Engagement

Abstract

This paper examines how blended teaching can renew introductory management courses in higher vocational colleges through two closely related pathways: the development of digital literacy and the strengthening of learning engagement. Rather than treating blended teaching as a simple combination of online and face-to-face instruction, the paper understands it as a pedagogical redesign that reorganises preparation, classroom activity, feedback, and assessment. Drawing on scholarship from blended learning, vocational pedagogy, digital literacy, student engagement, and management education, the analysis identifies four persistent constraints in current practice: weak links between theory and workplace situations, uneven student digital readiness, superficial participation, and assessment systems that over-reward short-term recall. The paper argues that digital literacy matters because students in blended environments must search, evaluate, communicate, and complete tasks through digital tools with growing independence. Learning engagement matters because flexible access and platform use produce little educational value unless students participate behaviourally, invest cognitively, and remain emotionally connected to the course. On this basis, the paper proposes six practical pathways for course renewal: reorganising content around managerial tasks, designing a three-stage learning loop, embedding meaningful digital tasks, strengthening engagement through interaction and assessment, developing teachers’ digital-pedagogical capability, and improving institutional support. The study offers a practice-oriented framework for colleges seeking to move foundational management teaching towards more applied, participatory, and digitally informed learning.