Abstract
As students transition into tertiary blended learning environments, their digital literacy in terms of technical capabilities have potential to impact on their access to digital resources. The first foundational year of STEM degrees includes compulsory courses across a broad range of scientific areas, each of which incorporates online technology in a discipline-specific manner. Given the diversity of online resources that STEM students need to access across their first-year coursework, this study applies learning analytical methods to determine whether students’ perceived level of digital literacy has an effect on their navigation of learning management systems (LMS) and overall academic performance. The frequency and nature of LMS interactivity were examined across four first-year STEM courses offered in the same semester at a single institution, using a K-means cluster analysis to group student responses. It was observed that high achieving students accessed LMS resources more frequently than mid or low-achieving students across all four STEM courses. Students’ perceived level of digital literacy was collected via survey (n = 282), and students were sorted high (n = 106) and low-level (n = 176) of perceived digital literacy—HDL and LDL, respectively. HDL students were not consistently found in the high-achieving academic group and did not perform better in their overall grade when compared to LDL students. LDL students were observed to perform better in specific online assessment tasks, which may be attributed to their increased frequency of LMS interactivity. These findings highlight the delicate balance between students’ perceived level of digital literacy, motivation for engaging with online learning environments, and academic performance.
Highlights
An immediate challenge for the twenty-first century is the integration of technologies in online and blended learning (BL) strategies to underpin contemporary pedagogies and teaching practices
The current study aims to apply learning analytical methods to determine whether students’ perceived level of digital literacy has an effect on their academic performance by examining the frequency and type of student interactions with the learning management system (LMS) across four first-year STEM courses offered in the same semester at a large tertiary institution in Australia
To explore student interactivity and academic performance across STEM blended courses, this study examined STEM courses offered at the same institution involving four disciplines—biology, chemistry, mathematics, and quantitative science
Summary
An immediate challenge for the twenty-first century is the integration of technologies in online and blended learning (BL) strategies to underpin contemporary pedagogies and teaching practices. Learning environments in higher education are reliant on their adaptation into a digital world, and need to utilise the full potential of learning technologies (Cook & Thompson, 2014; Garrison & Kanuka, 2004). This process had evolved slowly in the structure of academic courses (Bernard et al, 2014) prior to the precipitous global shift into online learning environments across. Students expressed low enthusiasm regarding technology-based learning based on a perception of increased workloads (Tune et al, 2013)
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