Abstract
The present research studies the factors that have impacted the affective engagement of university students in an educational online course. It examines how the type of interaction (learner-learner, learner-instructor, and learner-content) and the type of engagement (behavioural, cognitive and affective) have influenced the affective engagement of the students in the online course. Nineteen university students majoring in teaching mathematics, who were enrolled in the course Mathematics Teaching Methods, participated in the present research. Two data collection tools were used: semi-structured interviews and reflections. To analyse the texts resulting from the interviews and reflections, inductive and deductive qualitative content analysis was used. The research results indicated that university students have experienced more positive than negative affective engagement in the three communicational channels used in this course to facilitate online learning, which were: synchronous lectures, forums and assignments. The results also indicated that these three types of interaction have positively influenced students’ affective engagement in the three channels, with that influence being different from one channel to the other based on the interaction type taking place. We suggest that specific types of engagement need to be attended to for positive affect to occur. Doi: 10.28991/esj-2021-01296 Full Text: PDF
Highlights
Student engagement has attracted the attention of researchers as it can positively influence the different aspects of students’ learning, such as critical thinking [1], cognitive development [2], moral & ethical development [3], student satisfaction [4], and persistence [5]
The present research aimed at examining the effect that online interaction and engagement types manifested in 3 different communicational channels have on students' affective engagement level
The results indicate that the learner-content interaction gives rise to positive affective engagement, which is consistent with Nwankwo [53] who reported that students emphasized the interaction they had with course content as the most important out of the three types of interaction
Summary
Student engagement has attracted the attention of researchers as it can positively influence the different aspects of students’ learning, such as critical thinking [1], cognitive development [2], moral & ethical development [3], student satisfaction [4], and persistence [5]. Researchers are interested in student engagement in online classrooms, as these classrooms are flourishing due to their ability to maintain a high engagement level of both the instructors and the students in the educational process in different contexts and under various circumstances. One such context is that of COVID-19 that has made the use of online classrooms a must due to imposing social distancing restrictions which turned the regular classroom into a health hazard for students and instructors.
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