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.

1. Student
engagement in
the knowledge
society
European Conference on
Educational Research, 1013th September 2013
Peter Kahn, Lucy
Everington, Kathleen Kelm,
Iain Reid and Francine
Watkins

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)