Chronicling engagement: students’ experience of online learning over time

Although there is ample research into student engagement in online learning, much of this investigates the student experience through surveys administered at a fixed point in time, usually at the exit point of a single unit of study or course. The study described in this paper, by contrast, aimed to understand online student engagement over a whole semester, guided by two overarching questions: What factors impact students’ engagement over a semester? What factors account for fluctuation in engagement levels over time? This paper presents results from weekly feedback on online education students’ engagement over the length of one semester at a regional Australian university. It also chronicles in more depth the experiences of one student across the same semester. The findings offer longitudinal accounts of student engagement, demonstrating that levels of engagement fluctuate and are influenced by a variety of factors.     

College students’ perceived learning environment and their social media engagement in activities unrelated to class work

The aim of this study was to assess the connection between students’ perceived constructivist learning environment and their involvement in activities unrelated to class work via social media engagement (SME), while considering the moderating role of their openness to diversity and challenge (ODC) in explaining both variables. Another aim was to measure the impact of SME on students’ achievement (GPA). Data were gathered from 271 undergraduate students. According to the structural equation modeling results, a negative coefficient result was shown between the perception of the learning environment as constructivist and SME constructs. ODC was found positively connected to both variables. The students’ GPA was mainly explained by their cultural affiliation. Implications of these findings and directions for future research are discussed.     

Influence of academic self-regulation,critical thinking,and age on online graduate students’ academic help-seeking

Academic help-seeking is an invaluable learning strategy that has not yet received much attention in the distance education research literature. The asynchronous nature of distance education and many online courses presents an inherent roadblock to help-seeking. The purpose of this study was to explore the effect of academic self-regulation, critical thinking, and age on online graduate students’ help-seeking. Results indicate that these variables did significantly influence help-seeking, and that as self-regulation and critical thinking increased so did help-seeking. However, as age increased, help-seeking decreased. These results and implications for practice are discussed.     

Assessing high-school students’ ability to direct their learning

Theory on student learning provides that students are able to direct their learning when they have metacognitive knowledge about their own learning processes. In this article, a preliminary attempt to assess untrained high-school students’ metacognitive knowledge of learning processes as an ability through multiple-choice questions is reported. In three studies, item selection was established for ninth graders at the end of their school year. Also, in the final study the results showed that the ninth-grade students’ self-reported use of learning and studying strategies, study techniques, school learning and tiresome academic subjects related significantly to their metacognitive knowledge regarding learning processes. In the discussion, the practical consequences for school assessment are explicated and future research questions are raised.     

Effects of online strategies on students’ learning performance,self-efficacy,self-regulation and critical thinking in university online courses

Educational technology research and development - Fostering students’ abilities to deal with practical problems is an important objective of professional training. To enable students to have...     

Revisiting Kuo and Belland’s exploratory study of undergraduate students’ perceptions of online learning: minority students in continuing education

Educational technology research and development - COVID-19 has forced educators to make rapid changes to their pedagogy in order to shift from face-to-face instruction to online...     

eVALUate: an evaluation instrument for measuring students’ perceptions of their engagement and learning outcomes

In the current climate in Australian higher education, quality assurance in university teaching is a priority. In particular, the introduction of the Learning and Teaching Performance Fund (LTPF) has refocused attention on universities’ internal student evaluation survey instruments. This paper reports the development, validation and implementation of a new unit survey instrument which prompts students to reflect on what helps their achievement of unit learning outcomes, and to report their levels of motivation, engagement and overall satisfaction with a semester‐long course or unit of study. The instrument (eVALUate) was created from precepts reported in the research literature, current practices in evaluating teaching, and sound quality assurance practices appropriate to a university outcomes‐focused education paradigm.     

Exploring online students’ self-regulated learning with self-reported surveys and log files: a data mining approach

Many researchers who are interested in studying students’ online self-regulated learning (SRL) have heavily relied on self-reported surveys. Data mining is an alternative technique that can be used to discover students’ SRL patterns from large data logs saved on a course management system. The purpose of this study was to identify students’ online SRL patterns with the use of data mining techniques. We examined both self-reported self-regulation surveys and log files to predict online students’ achievements and found using log files was more powerful in predicting students’ achievements in an online course than self-reported survey data. Discussions to enhance teaching and learning practices with the use of data mining are provided.     

Factors enabling and constraining students’ collaborative online international learning experiences

Learning Environments Research - The Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) Virtual Exchange Project (VEP) emerged as a pedagogically-innovative and low-cost initiative to...     

Architecture students’ perceptions of their learning environment and their academic performance

Scholars have agreed that the way in which students perceive their learning environments influences their academic performance. Empirical studies that focus on architecture students, however, have been very scarce. This is the gap that an attempt is filled in this study. A questionnaire survey of 273 students in a school of architecture in Nigeria provided data for this pilot study. The perceptions of the students were best defined by the involvement of the students in their studies, the perceived support, and conduciveness of the learning environment. The students’ perceptions of their learning environment varied with their years of study, age and gender. Their perceptions of inflexibility of schedule, positive assessment, and fairness influenced the overall grades of students. The results suggests which aspects of learning environment that can be manipulated by architectural educators to improve the performance of their students. The study of the learning environment of architecture students still appears to be relatively unexplored. The value of this study therefore lies in its exploration of the perceptions of the learning environment from the point of view of students.     

Exploring intrinsic and extrinsic motivational aspects of middle school students’ aspirations for their mathematics learning

Middle school students have been pervasively described in the research literature as exhibiting disaffection, disengagement, and a lack of interest in mathematics classrooms. This study investigated this notion empirically using students’ own voice on their wishes for mathematics learning to see if they characterise themselves in this way in their self-reports. Over 3500 Australian middle school students responded to a free-format prompt and reported diverse but overwhelmingly positive aspirations related to intrinsic motivational features inherent in their disposition and to extrinsic factors in their environment, such as the learning context and activities provided. Evidence of all four goal orientations was found in the students’ responses but most noticeably for the productive mastery-approach orientation. When these students described what they wish for in their mathematics classrooms, they mentioned challenging work, interesting work, and opportunities to collaborate.     

Teachers’ estimates of their students’ motivation and engagement: being in synch with students

Being aware of, monitoring and responding constructively to students’ signals of motivation and to students’ signals of engagement represent two important teaching skills. We hypothesised, however, that teachers would better estimate their students’ engagement than they would estimate their students’ motivation. To test this hypothesis, Korean high-school teachers rated three aspects of motivation and four aspects of engagement for each student in their class, while students completed questionnaires to provide referent self-reports of these same aspects of their motivation and engagement. Multi-level analyses showed that, after statistically controlling for the potentially confounding information of student achievement, teachers’ engagement estimates corresponded significantly to their students’ self-reports while their motivation estimate did not. These findings validate teachers’ skill in inferring their students’ classroom engagement and lead to the recommendation that teachers monitor classroom engagement to be in synch with their students during instruction.     

Analysing students’ engagement and learning presence in an educational blog community

This paper is a narrative about the use of narrative as a means to understand how the use of technology assisted the educational community of Hong Kong during the SARS crisis of 2003. It is not a carefully planned conventional research study. It is based on seven narratives written by staff at The Chinese University of Hong Kong about their experiences during SARS. The experience of an online conference run by the author has also been considered. Overall, in our context, technology was able to come naturally and appropriately to the fore in our time of crisis. For me, it is a message that technology is now a mainstream tool that can be rapidly mobilized and that is very satisfying indeed.

Die Verwendung der Berichterstattung zum Verständnis der Annäherung eines Fernstudiums an ein Hochschulstudium während der SARS‐Krise in Hongkong. Dieses Referat bezieht sich auf die Berichterstattung als Mittel zum Verständnis, wie die Verwendung von Technologie die Bildungsgemeinschaft von Hongkong während der SARS‐Krise von 2003 unterstützt hat. Es handelt sich hierbei nicht um eine sorgfältig geplante, konventionelle Forschungsstudie, sondern dieses Referat basiert auf sieben durch das Lehrerkollegium der Chinesischen Universität in Hongkong verfassten Berichten. Die Erfahrungen einer Online‐Konferenz, die der Autor durchführte, wurde ebenso berücksichtigt. Im unserem Kontext stellten wir fest, dass im Allgemeinen in Krisenzeiten die Technologie auf natürliche und passende Weise in den Vordergrund rückt. Für uns ist dies ein Hinweis, dass Technologie heute ein alltägliches und überzeugendes Mittel ist, das schnell eingesetzt werden kann.

Utilisation du récit pour comprendre la convergence de formation par correspondance et de formation institutionelle pendant la période de SARS à Hong Kong. Cet exposé se réfère à l'utilisation du récit pour comprendre comment l'utilisation de la technologie a assisté la communauté de formation de Hong Kong pendant la crise SARS en 2003. Il ne s'agit pas d'une étude de recherche classique projeté soigneusement mais se réfère à sept récits du corps enseignant de l'université chinoise de Hong Kong sur leurs expériences pendant le SARS. L'expérience d'une conférence en ligne dirigée par l’auteur a également été considérée. En total, dans ce contexte, nous pouvons résumer que dans les temps de crises, la technologie passe au premier plan de manière naturelle et appropriée Pour nous, ceci est un message que la technologie est devenu un instrument quotidien et satisfaisant qui peut être mobilisé rapidement.     

Want students to engage? Contextualise graduate learning outcomes and assess for employability

The ability of graduates to proactively develop, adapt and repackage their capabilities (or attributes) is an essential aspect of employability. This study was conducted at Deakin University, where graduate capabilities have been recast as graduate learning outcomes, and employability is frequently referenced. In light of significant curriculum reform to make graduate capabilities prominent, we investigated student perceptions of graduate capabilities and associated learning outcomes, as well as preparation for employment, to better understand how we can engage students in developing and showcasing their employability. We interviewed 45 students across 10 focus groups and qualitatively analysed their responses for commonly recurring themes. Focus groups were completed in two stages with data analysis and adjustment of questions between stages to enable validation and greater depth of understanding. Our analysis suggests that even with capabilities renamed as learning outcomes, students find graduate learning outcomes too generic to be meaningful and are most likely to engage with learning outcomes that are contextualised and assessed. Our case study illustrates ways to combat this – particularly the importance of assessment design and consistent, student-focused communication in engaging students in the development of capabilities and in the curation of evidence for employability. Students also suggest that advice from employers, professionals and recent graduates, and exposure to industry-related experiences could help make graduate capabilities more meaningful.     

Interrogating students’ perceptions of their online learning experiences with Brookfield’s critical incident questionnaire

This article discusses whether the very act of accessing online students’ experiences of teaching may itself foster students’ sense of belonging to a learning community. The article reports and reflects on the application of Brookfield’s critical incident questionnaire (CIQ) in postgraduate courses delivered online in 2008–2010 through the University of Newcastle in Australia. The anonymous CIQ is designed in part to access students’ views of teaching practice, and was deployed as part of an ongoing interest in quality teaching. The article makes recommendations for deploying the CIQ in online learning spaces and concludes with some reflections on unexpected opportunities thoughtful CIQ deployment may provide. The practice of sharing students’ anonymous responses may have helped to foster students’ sense of a shared learning community. This may be particularly valuable in an asynchronous online learning context where students are typically geographically isolated from one another.     

“I ‘feel’ like I am at university even though I am online.” Exploring how students narrate their engagement with higher education institutions in an online learning environment

This article outlines a collaborative study between higher education institutions in Australia, which qualitatively explored the online learning experience for undergraduate and postgraduate students. The project adopted a narrative inquiry approach and encouraged students to story their experiences of this virtual environment, providing a snapshot of how learning is experienced by those undertaking online studies. The study explores what impacted upon students’ engagement in this environment and how different facets of their learning experience made a qualitative difference to how individuals enacted engagement. Drawing upon Sharon Pittaway’s engagement framework, the article seeks to foreground student voice as the learners define their engagement in learning, the strategies they employed to assist this process and how engagement was enacted at an individual level. The students’ reflections presented in this article can be used to inform teaching and learning strategies designed to improve engagement in the online environment within the higher education sector.     

The relationship between students’ perceptions of portfolio assessment practice and their approaches to learning

This study focuses on students’ learning approaches in the context of a competency‐based program on Applied Sciences, with portfolio assessment as its core mode of assessment. The study examines students’ perceptions of these assessment practices and the relationships to their learning approaches. Additionally, differences in perceptions and learning approaches between first‐year students and second‐year students, who already have one year of experience with the portfolio assessment practice, are investigated. A total of 110 students completed two questionnaires at the end of the academic year: the Revised SPQ (Study process questionnaire) was used to measure their approaches to learning and the AEQ (Assessment experience questionnaire) was used to measure their perceptions of the assessment practice. The results indicate that, when implementing portfolio assessment, feedback is essential. Moreover, it seems not to be the assessment design, but rather how it is implemented, and how students’ learning is stimulated through the assessment, that influences the quality of learning.     

How do students define their roles and responsibilities in online learning group projects?

The goal of this study was to explore the processes of group role formation in online class settings. Qualitative analysis was used to code chat logs and discussion threads in six undergraduate Family and Consumer Sciences online courses that required online group projects. Four themes related to the process of group role formation emerged: testing the waters, apologies as being nice, tag – you’re it, and struggling to find one’s role. Students created roles of leader, wannabe, spoiler, agreeable enabler, coat‐tails, and supportive worker as the group process evolved over the course of the semester. Results lend support for a balance between allowing students to create and experience roles on their own and faculty assignment of roles. Questions are raised related to faculty approaches toward directing and scaffolding the group process.