Researching student agency in digital education as if the social aspects matter: students’ experience of participatory dimensions of online peer assessment

Abstract

This paper focuses on the relationship between social aspects and individual agency in digital education, analysed in the context of online peer assessment in a first-semester course. Applying the adapted participation gestalt framework to identify how a particular form of participation emerges, and how it is constituted, individual interviews and focus group meetings with 13 Danish students were carried out. The analysis highlights a number of signs accumulated by students to construct their participation in the interaction. These signs argue against simplistic accounts of student agency in educational research, whereby student agency is approached as an individual and cognitive phenomenon and relationships as stable and unproblematic. The paper argues that student agency should not automatically be assumed possible as part of digital education or digital student-centred learning activities. Instead, the social aspects of educational interactions need to be taken into consideration when presenting digital education as a means to enhance student agency.