This document summarizes a study on student engagement in online learning. The study examined how student reflexivity and high-impact practices influence engagement for online master's students. Through interviews and discussion board analysis of 22 students in public health, management, and computer science programs, the study found: 1) Learning environments can trigger rich student reflexivity; 2) High-impact practices expect communicative and co-reflexivity to progress mutual understanding; 3) Student engagement is influenced by task-related habits, social relations, and beliefs/dispositions. The study implications are to analyze student reflexivity profiles in program design and assist students in exercising unfamiliar reflexive modes to support learning in an uncertain knowledge society.
2. Introduction
• Development of the knowledge society in
Europe accompanied by shift to mass higher
education
— Online learning increasingly playing a major role,
although Europe lags behind the United States
• A mixed picture exists around student
engagement for fully-online learning:
• Further take up of online learning in Europe:
— in part depends on demonstrating more robust
approaches to student engagement.
3. Research questions/context
• To what extent can student engagement be
explained through reflexivity?
• How do high-impact practices in the online
setting influence student reflexivity?
— Considered in relation to students on fully-online
masters degrees in Public Health, Management and
Computer Science, offering by the University of
Liverpool, in partnership with Laureate Online
Education.
4. Theoretical basis
• Grounded in Margaret Archer’s realist social
theory, and building on recent work by Kahn:
— Reflexivity (and co-reflexivity) mediates the impact of
social structure on the agency of the learner; allows us
to address engagement at the level of the individual
student.
— Social and economic change associated with
knowledge societies limits the scope for situations in
which similarities between individuals are continuously
distributed throughout a stable social group and where
similar contexts are recurrently encountered.
5. Study design
• Interpretive multiple case study of students
from the given contexts:
— Stage 1: analysis of postings to (asynchronous)
discussion boards for 22 learners.
— Stage 2: semi-structured interviews with a sub-group
of 8 students.
— Experiences considered for each student primarily in
relation to two contrasting module designs.
— Data analysis using the qualitative software, with
deductive/inductive approaches to category
identification.
6. Theoretical findings (Reflexivity)
• Given learning environments triggered rich
expressions of reflexivity as students took
responsibility in the face of uncertainty
— High-impact practices expect courses of action
grounded in several modes of reflexivity
— Particular variation seen in relation to communicative
reflexivity and the co-reflexivity needed to progress
mutual actions
— ‘Trigger’ points evident for fractured reflexivity
7. Theoretical findings (Engagement)
• Task-related practices
— Habits established around the timing of tasks, and the
conduct of sub-tasks (e.g. reading, organising
thoughts and writing a post).
• Social relations and practices
— Specific strategies employed to build corporate
agency; co-reflexivity supported through specific interpersonal relations.
• Beliefs, dispositions and affectivity
— Attitudes towards knowledge; self-efficacy.
— No specific evidence identified as to the role that
reflexivity plays in establishing these aspects.
8. Generating mutual understanding
Communicative Selected quotation
practice
“I think at the beginning I wasn’t asking that many questions, either. I had my
Invitation
Provocation
Identifying a
common
interest
Reaching out
answer and I wasn’t asking a question to get a follow up on my answer
again.”
“I guess the first thing that I do is challenge someone else’s idea ... but the
end product can often lead to the exact opposite where it can change in my
mind.”
“I try to bring my own experiences, as there will be some variations on this
as people are in different countries and will have had different experiences.”
“I just look at students who are less engaging in the class showing that I can
also appreciate their posts. This is how I engage with the classroom.”
“On some occasions I felt like I had to defend my previous answer but I’d
Defending
hoped that I had done that by providing extra evidence rather than being
argumentative.”
Encouragement “When people like what you write then they watch out for the next posting,
and that works for me, because I get compliments and then want to do more
research.”
9. Examples of student profiles
M1 – no evidence of communicative/coreflexivity; fixed view of knowledge.
PH2 – emphasis on autonomous reflexivity, with
wider inter-personal relations not engaged;
but dissertation/other tasks entail interactions
with others.
C2 – balanced indications against all modes of
reflexivity.
10. Implications for practice (1)
• Scope for dissonance
— between the modes of reflexivity, practices and
dispositions expected by a learning environment and
the profile of the student
• Analyse the profile of reflexivity, dispositions,
task-related practices and social practices in
designing programmes.
11. Implications for practice (2)
• Education within a knowledge society
— Uncertainty as a defining feature of life within society
— Assisting with task-related uncertainty
— Support students in exercising reflexivity, especially
where a mode is unfamiliar
• A social basis for the knowledge society
— Relational dimension remains evident given the need
for corporate agency
— Tasks and facilitation to support students in
establishing and progressing joint concerns
— Integrating further social relations into programmes of
study
12. Concluding comments
• Reflexivity provides a good basis for
explaining variation in student engagement.
• Need for reflexivity lessens as practices were
established by students
— But dispositions, affectivity and beliefs seen to
influence the on-going exercise of reflexivity.
• What is the basis for the ‘knowledge’ society?
— The ‘reflexive society’? The ‘co-reflexive society’?
13. Related reading
Kahn P E (2013) ‘Theorising student engagement in higher education’,
British Educational Research Journal, (available online 7th October
2013 http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/berj.3121/full)
Editor's Notes
Specific uses of learning technology identified as having a ‘high impact’ on student engagement. Low levels of student retention for many fully-online courses.Many studies focused on the group level and the institutional level, e.g. to allow consideration of widening access to HE. National Survey of Student Engagement in the USA. But variation not explained so well at this level.NicoStehr contends that where a society is predicated on the creation and use of knowledge, then ‘ever greater scope to critically deconstruct and reassemble knowledge claims’ (2001, p. 139).
Reflexivity is taken here to refer to the ordinary capacity to employ one’s mental powers in considering oneself in relation to social contexts.
These findings are not immediately technology-related, but then technology serves the pedagogy rather than driving learning on its own. High impact practices here are online ones.Concentrating here more on the main findings rather than on the evidence that underpins these claims – you are welcome to view the full paper for this further level of the argument. Archer indicates that different students have different comfort zones in relation to reflexivity. Contrast with Coates work.
Reflexivity allows one to establish and manage these practices and relations; while reflexivity is also influenced by them. At least in the first two cases given here. Learning design is thus closely linked with reflexivity, as they mutually interact.
Overlap evident here between the social practice and the reflexivity that underpins it. We see here specific manifestations of co-reflexivity on the part of a group of students.
For instance – group based elements, or attitudes towards knowledge.Analysis – Coates as a key issue to mention here.Group tasks, whether discussions, projects, … Activity that offers a ‘mutual’ take on the internet, as with social media and ‘objective’ - ‘trip advisor’ data internet searches.Subject dimension – short cuts for male medics on public health courses.Support for students – the relations that they have that will support co-reflexivity.
Taking advantage of technology to introduce additional partners into a discussion or to highlight their perspectives (e.g. podcasts)an instructor focus on catalysing corporate agencyHelping students to establish new habitual practices/sub-tasks Additional guidance, computer-generated ‘facilitation’/prompts, raising questions that lead to new actions, … Assistance in exercising given forms of reflexivity – tools, advice, FAQs, computer-generated ‘facilitation’/prompts.Awareness of one’s own profile of reflexivity and dispositions – online test linked to modes of reflexivity, tasks that ask one to display awareness.Personal development activity to increase capacity for reflexivity, whether integrated or stand alone (e.g. discussion around establishing task-related practices).Learning at a distance may mean that some of this reflexivity is not otherwise supported – specific means are required for it to happen. Globalised context here is key – different perspectives. People do think in different ways.Task orientation in software engineering and management.Variation here will happen in relation to different subjects – as with public health or group work in computing.Specific social relations that might underpin this?
Etienne Wenger work linking landscapes of knowledge to communities of practice. Relations are sometimes downplayed in discussion of the knowledge society – the network society is also an important part of this. Where the world is radically unknowable, the relations provide one means to manage the associated uncertainties.