Online Learning Settings Research Articles

How do you feel today? Nurturing emotional awareness among students in online learning

ABSTRACT Integrating strategy in education to improve the well-being of the students is an undisputable responsibility of teachers. This study assessed the perceptions of the students on the ‘How do you feel today-strategy’ used by the teacher in her instruction as a way to promote emotional awareness among students and further utilized the information in strategizing online instructions. Mixed-method action research was utilized in this study. The action was implemented in one intact class and twenty-eight preservice teachers’ participants volunteered to answer the questionnaire and structured interview questions. The strategy used by the teacher gained positive perceptions from the participants and revealed that it highlighted their emotional awareness. The sense of belonging and a way of validation and reflection of emotions were also determined in the inclusion of the strategy in the instruction. The strategy was also found to bridge the gap of connection between students in the online learning setting and brought positivity in the classroom. The use of this strategy is recommended to be used in other classroom with conscious effort of determining student’s characteristics.

THE INTERACTION BETWEEN TEACHING COMPETENCIES AND SELF-EFFICACY IN FOSTERING ENGAGEMENT AMONGST DISTANCE LEARNERS: A PATH ANALYSIS APPROACH

Purpose - Distance learners are expected to actively participate in online learning settings to improve their cognitive level and promote more meaningful learning. However, without specific teaching skills and competencies from the instructors together with belief and capability of the distance learners themselves, their engagement in online learning would not be achieved. Limited studies have examined the extent of self-efficacy in encouraging student engagement in learning, especially within online learning settings. Thus, this study examined self-efficacy as a moderator to test its influence on the relationship between online teaching competencies and student engagement. Methodology - This quantitative research was conducted using the purposive sampling technique. This study involved 321 distance learners from a Malaysian public university. The questionnaire was created using SurveyMonkey, and the measurement items were adopted from past research with acceptable reliability. This study utilised partial least squares (PLS) 3.0 to test the hypothesis via correlation and path analysis. Findings - Contrary to expectations, the findings contributed to the literature that online teaching competencies and self-efficacy were not significantly related to student engagement. The association between online teaching competencies and student engagement was shown to be moderated by self-efficacy. This finding is aligned with Bandura’s (2001) social cognitive theory which states that personal factors such as self-regulation, self-efficacy, and interest are impacted in the distance education context. Significance - The results of this study can benefit online course instructors in Malaysian distance educational institutions to develop courses that enhance online learners’ self-efficacy. Online teaching competencies employed by online distance learners can be the primary objective when developing faculty development programmes that aim to coach online instructors to be competent in online teaching. Moreover, institutions are encouraged to introduce other online learning platforms to facilitate training of its practitioners in order to accelerate successful online teaching and learning experiences.

L2 learning online: Self-directed learning and gender influence in Indonesian university students

The present study was conducted to investigate Indonesian second language (L2) learners’ Self-Directed Learning (SDL) in English during the online classes due to the Covid-19 pandemic and to investigate whether there was a significant difference in SDL between female and male learners. As online learning is implemented nationwide in Indonesia due to the pandemic, it becomes paramount to investigate learners’ SDL, considered very critical in online learning settings where teachers' ability to check learners' progress is not as extensive as it is in the face-to-face mode of instruction. The participants of the study were 187 undergraduate students taking English for Academic Purposes (EAP) classes. Through the data obtained from the online questionnaire, the study found that learners, in general, reported a high level of SDL even though many of them still embraced procrastination behaviours and considered the pragmatic need to pass the EAP class more important than the actual L2 learning. It also found that there was no significant difference between female learners’ SDL and that of male learners. Based on the findings and analysis of the possible factors, possible contributions of the study are presented along with the possible limitations and suggested directions for future research in the field.
 HIGHLIGHTS:
 
 Learners, in general, reported a high level of SDL.
 Despite that, many of them still embraced procrastination behaviours and considered the pragmatic need to pass the English for Academic Purposes class more important than the actual L2 learning.

From Face-to-Face to Digital Learning; Seen from EFL Student's Lenses Enrolled in Online Group Work

Numerous higher education institutions around the world must shift their instructions from face-to-face (FTF) to online learning due to Corona Virus Disease in 2019 (Covid19). Furthermore, with the increase in popularity of group work in higher education, especially in the language classroom, and the pivotal changes over the last years, the group works encounter new challenges as they transition to the online world. The study aims to explore the experiences of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students' engagement in online group works to explore the benefits and challenges in a new learning environment. The qualitative research design provided an in-depth understanding of the students' perceived value of online group work. Further, an interview was used as the main technique in collecting the data from the entire participants. Furthermore, the findings demonstrated that students had generally good attitudes about online group work; however, some students noted that language and communications concerns presented difficulty at times. Nevertheless, the findings also demonstrated that the benefits of this experience surpassed the drawbacks. Thus, the study's findings can be valuable for practitioners and curriculum designers since they highlight the benefits of group work in an online learning setting and the students' problems they may confront during these classes.

The COVID-19 pandemic and student engagement in online learning: The moderating effect of technology self-efficacy

This study examines the moderating effect of technology self-efficacy on the relationship between online learning and student engagement in a higher education setting. A survey was used to gather data from participants (n=425) who were sampled from a population of registered students in a Technical University in Ghana. The data gathered were examined using hierarchical regression analysis. Results revealed that, technology self-efficacy strengthens 1) the positive relationship between online learning environment and student engagement; and 2) the positive relationship between instructional resources and student engagement. Secondly, the results revealed that the type of device used by students in the online learning environment has a positive and significant effect on student engagement. Conversely, findings of the current study show that while gender has a negative but significant effect on student engagement, age and academic discipline have insignificant effect on student engagement in the online learning setting. These findings among others lead the authors to propose ways that future studies could examine how technology self-efficacy, learning devices, instructional resources, institutional support systems and the online learning environment could be developed to enhance effective student engagement.

A Study to Assess the Perception of Conventional Teaching Versus Online Class Teaching Among Nursing Students in Selected Colleges of Lucknow

Background of the Study: In the last decade online teaching and learning have become a major part of formal and informal education. Despite the current expansion of online teaching and learning settings, the most common use of online teaching and learning still appears to be the same: putting a specific content of face-to-face teaching on the web using a learning management system.[4] Compared with traditional class room lectures, faculty has less control over online teaching, and students are more likely to skip the class. Therefore, the progress of online teaching and its learning effectiveness largely depend on students' high level active learning outside of classroom. The students have difficulties due to the lack of a good learning attitude. Students often have problems such as lack of self - discipline, suitable learning materials or good learning environments when they are self-isolated at home. [4] As per the above affirm mentioned reasons, the researchers felt that it is important to analyze the effectiveness of the perception towards conventional class teaching and online class teaching. Aim of this study is to find out comparison between perception of conventional class teaching versus online class teaching. Materials & Methods: A descriptive survey research method was used. 100 students who fulfilled the inclusion criteria like BSc Nursing first year to third year students who attended the online class and class room teaching regularly for a minimum period of 3 months or more were selected by using convenience sampling technique. Semi structured questionnaire was used for the collection of data from the samples through an online survey. Inferential and descriptive statistics were used to analyze the data. Results: The mean value (77.73) and standard deviation (14.26) of online class teaching is higher than mean value (77.13) and standard deviation (13.01) of conventional class teaching. The t- test value is (1.88) shows highly significant at (0.05) level of confidence. So online class teaching is more effective than the conventional class teaching. Conclusion: From the present study it can be concluded that the flexible study hours and the environment as well as the decreased study pressure may be reasons for the online classes to be more effective than conventional class teaching.

Temporal Assessment of Self-Regulated Learning by Mining Students’ Think-Aloud Protocols

It has been widely theorized and empirically proven that self-regulated learning (SRL) is related to more desired learning outcomes, e.g., higher performance in transfer tests. Research has shifted to understanding the role of SRL during learning, such as the strategies and learning activities, learners employ and engage in the different SRL phases, which contribute to learning achievement. From a methodological perspective, measuring SRL using think-aloud data has been shown to be more insightful than self-report surveys as it helps better in determining the link between SRL activities and learning achievements. Educational process mining on the basis of think-aloud data enables a deeper understanding and more fine-grained analyses of SRL processes. Although students’ SRL is highly contextualized, there are consistent findings of the link between SRL activities and learning outcomes pointing to some consistency of the processes that support learning. However, past studies have utilized differing approaches which make generalization of findings between studies investigating the unfolding of SRL processes during learning a challenge. In the present study with 29 university students, we measured SRL via concurrent think-aloud protocols in a pre-post design using a similar approach from a previous study in an online learning environment during a 45-min learning session, where students learned about three topics and wrote an essay. Results revealed significant learning gain and replication of links between SRL activities and transfer performance, similar to past research. Additionally, temporal structures of successful and less successful students indicated meaningful differences associated with both theoretical assumptions and past research findings. In conclusion, extending prior research by exploring SRL patterns in an online learning setting provides insights to the replicability of previous findings from online learning settings and new findings show that it is important not only to focus on the repertoire of SRL strategies but also on how and when they are used.

Teamwork competency and satisfaction in online group project-based engineering course: The cross-level moderating effect of collective efficacy and flipped instruction

This study examined the relationship between students’ teamwork competency and satisfaction in a synchronous online flipped group project-based course, focusing on the possibility of group collective efficacy and flipped learning to moderate this relationship. We collected data from 19 teams (N = 75 college engineering students) at a science and technology university in Cebu, central Philippines, through a questionnaire survey over a 12-week synchronous online course. Multi-level hierarchical linear modeling test of hypotheses revealed a significant positive relationship between teamwork competency and satisfaction. Similarly, group collective efficacy recorded a significant relationship with satisfaction. At the team level, group collective efficacy and flipped learning moderated the relationship between teamwork competency and satisfaction. Learners in groups with high collective efficacy and online flipped learning showed a stronger relationship than those with low efficacy and conventional online instruction. The findings and discussions provide practical implications and possible interventions teachers could apply to enhance collective efficacy and boost learning satisfaction in synchronous collaborative online learning settings.

The Progress a Pre-Service English Language Teacher Made in Her Feedback Giving Practices in Distance Teaching Practicum

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, teaching practicum has been conducted in online learning settings in Turkey, which, in return, has made pre-service English language teachers do their practicums online. The lack of research into the effect of distance teaching practicum on pre-service English language teachers’ practices of giving feedback prompted the researcher to carry out this research. This instrumental case study aims to investigate the changes in a pre-service English language teacher’s feedback giving practices in the English lessons she taught in the distance teaching practicum and her views about how the distance teaching practicum affected her skills of providing feedback. The results obtained from the analysis of the data collected from the researcher’s notes on the pre-service English language teacher’s provision of feedback in the four online lessons she taught, post-lesson telephone interviews and end-of-study semi-structured interview indicated her teaching experiences helped her make a considerable progress in her skills in giving effective feedback. The findings pointed to the significance of distance teaching practicum in developing pre-service English language teachers’ feedback giving practices.

Deterministic policy gradient algorithms for semi‐Markov decision processes

A large class of sequential decision-making problems under uncertainty, with broad applications from preventive maintenance to event-triggered control can be modeled in the framework of semi-Markov decision processes (SMDPs). Unlike Markov decision processes (MDPs), SMDPs are underexplored in the online and reinforcement learning (RL) settings. In this paper, we extend the well-known deterministic policy gradient (DPG) theorem in MDPs to SMDPs under average-reward criterion. The existing stochastic policy gradient methods not only require, in general, a large number of samples for training, but they also suffer from high variance in the gradient estimation when applied to problems with deterministic optimal policy. Our DPG method can potentially remedy these issues. On the basis of this method and depending on the choice of a critic, different actor–critic algorithms can easily be developed in the RL setup. We present two example actor–critic algorithms. Both algorithms employ our developed policy gradient theorem for their actors, but use two different critics; one uses a simple SARSA update while the other one uses the same on-policy update but with compatible function approximators. We demonstrate the efficacy of our method both mathematically and via simulations.

Impact of Synchronous and Asynchronous Settings of Online Teaching and Learning in Higher Education on Students' Learning Experience During COVID-19.

The sudden impact of the COVID-19 pandemic challenged universities to provide students with online teaching and learning settings that were both immediately applicable and supportive of quality learning. This resulted in a broad variety of synchronous and asynchronous online settings of teaching and learning. While some courses balanced both kinds, others offered either predominantly synchronous or asynchronous teaching and learning. In a survey study with students (N=3,056) and teachers (N=396) from a large German university, we explored whether a predominance of synchronous or asynchronous teaching and learning settings in higher education was associated with certain student experiences and outcomes. Additionally, we examined how well these two types of teaching and learning settings support students’ basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness proposed by self-determination theory (SDT). Data were collected after the first online semester due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The results imply that from the students’ perspective, the teaching methods involved in the two settings of teaching and learning differ with regard to their potential to support social interaction and to support basic psychological needs as proposed by SDT. Students who studied mostly in synchronous settings reported more peer-centered activities such as feedback in comparison to students in mostly asynchronous settings. In contrast, teachers perceived fewer differences between teaching methods in synchronous and asynchronous settings, especially regarding feedback activities. Further, students in mostly synchronous settings reported greater support of their basic psychological needs for competence support and relatedness as well as a greater overall satisfaction with the online term compared to students in mostly asynchronous settings. Across all students, greater fulfillment of psychological needs and higher technology acceptance coincided with outcomes that are more favorable. Implications for the post-pandemic classroom are drawn.

Enhancing Students' Online Engagement: A Study on Online Distance Learning Institutions' Students in Malaysia

Online Distance Learning (ODL) settings in higher education institutions assist in allocating resources of education, facilitating instructor-to-student interaction, supporting student learning groups, maintaining the progression of student learning, and allowing students to enroll ODL learning (Islam, 2013). Students' online learning exposures in universities and colleges tend to be combined with academic exposures for the continuous learning progress not because only related to academic accomplishment, but also due to individual success of lifelong learning. The online learning setting tertiary education institutions is a learning environment that puts together the latest digital technology with the practices of teaching and learning as important creativity and innovation through the latest performed-technology platform (Eze, Chinedu-Eze, & Bello, 2018). The advantages of online learning settings for both the students and higher education institutions are significant cost saving of having physical infrastructure of teaching and learning, cause the course materials digitization where it can be shared and retrieved at any time and wherever the students are and embedding into the global educational setting (Pham, Limbu, Bui, Nguyen, & Pham, 2019). Malaysia is aiming to become a developed country and has set a long term vision for that to be realized. This aim can only be achieved by producing high technological skills and a critical thinking workforce. Information communication technology (ICT) will be the main catalyst in leading this transformation. In an online learning environment, engagement has become one of the critical issues for the students. Since the trend today of migrating from the face-to-face classroom to web-based systems, some challenges need to be resolved. In fully online learning, there is 78% of students fail in completing their online courses (Simpson, 2010). Students' failures in online courses were mainly due to their inactive engagement (Kuzilek, Hlosta, Herrmannova, Zdrahal, & Wolff, 2015). Halverson, Graham, Spring, Drysdale, and Henrie (2014) in their thematic analysis have found the term engagement been mentioned in more than fifty per cent of the reviewed publications. Thus, this study aims to assess the direct influence of online learning attitude, online peer collaboration, and psychological motivation on digital readiness and digital readiness influence on online engagement. Keywords: Online Learning Attitude, Online Peer Collaboration, Psychological Motivation, Digital Readiness and Online Engagement.

Challenges of E-Learning During Covid-19 Pandemic: An Experience Of Educators And Students Of Faculty Of Medicine And Defence Health (FMDH), National Defence University Of Malaysia (NDUM)

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the medical teaching paradigm worldwide. Online classes and assessments have been introduced using many teaching platforms. Medical faculties in Malaysia faced many challenges in the past two years when most clinical teachings were halted. Students were also struggling to adapt to the new online learning versus traditional classroom settings. This paper describes the experience of educators of the faculty of medicine of NDUM. Bangladesh Journal of Medical Science Vol.20(5) 2021 p.175-177

An Interpretable Pipeline for Identifying At-Risk Students

This paper introduces a novel approach to identify at-risk students with a focus on output interpretability through analyzing learning activities at a finer granularity on a weekly basis. Specifically, this approach converts the predicted output from the former weeks into meaningful probabilities to infer the predictions in the current week for maintaining the consecutiveness among learning activities. To demonstrate the efficacy of our model in identifying at-risk students, we compare the weekly AUCs and averaged performance (i.e., accuracy, precision, recall, and f1-score) over each course with the baseline models (i.e., Random Forest, Support Vector Machine, and Decision Tree), respectively. Furthermore, we adopt a Top- K metric to examine the number of at-risk students that the model is able to identify with high precision during each week. Finally, the model output is interpreted through a model-agnostic interpretation approach to support instructors to make informed recommendations for students’ learning. The experimental results demonstrate the capability and interpretability of our model in identifying at-risk students in online learning settings. In addition to that our work also provides significant implications in building accountable machine learning pipelines that can be used to automatically generated individualized learning interventions while considering fairness between different learning groups.

Developing emotionally intelligent teaching approaches in online learning

This ‘on the horizon’ paper discusses the evaluation outcomes of a pilot Emotional Intelligence Skills Training (EIST) workshop, intended as a resource to support teachers’ enhancement of student engagement in online learning settings. Sixteen HE teachers participated in a pilot of a new EIST workshop which explored topics including; 1) recognising and managing emotions in oneself; 2) recognising and managing emotions in others’, and 3) using emotion. Evaluation was conducted using focus groups. Feedback revealed that, in addition to raising awareness of the need to better recognise and manage students’ emotions in online environments, participants felt that EIST supported the development of more positive relationships with students and enhanced engagement. EIST could play an important role in supporting academic staff to better engage students in online settings.

The Online Learning Academic Achievement of Chinese Students during the COVID-19 Pandemic: the Role of Self-Regulated Learning and Academic Entitlement

In the spring semester of 2020, all Chinese higher education institutions delivered courses online across the nation in response to the COVID-19. This study explores Chinese college students’ self-regulated learning, academic entitlement, and academic achievement during the transitioning from face-to-face to online learning environments during this special time. Structure equation modeling was conducted, and results indicate that academic entitlement associates with students’ online learning academic achievement. Whereas self-regulated learning does not relate to academic achievement in the online learning setting. Additionally, academic entitlement is marginally associated with academic achievement only among male students, while self-regulated learning is not a significant predictor for both genders. However, self-regulated learning is marginally linked with higher academic achievement among students who do not have previous online learning experiences but not among those who took online courses before.

Model‐agnostic online forecasting for PV power output

A reliable forecasting model is required for photovoltaic (PV) power output because solar energy is highly volatile. Another driver for the need of a reliable forecasting model is concept drift, which means that the statistical properties of the data change over time. In this paper, an online forecasting method to handle concept drift is proposed. First, the problem of forecasting in batch learning is transformed into a forecasting in online learning setting. Then, an online learning algorithm is applied, which is good for handling concept drift. Through experiments using the real-world data, it is shown that the method noticeably improves performance compared to the case where a trained model is used. Under various concept drift scenarios, the method improves performance by up to 87.3%. It is also shown that the re-training method (a representative existing method) has several limitations. This method requires several issues to be solved, such as selection of a proper window size, and this is evident through results showing different performance under different settings. In contrast, the method shows a reliable and desirable performance under various concept drift scenarios and thus outperforms the re-training method. The method improves performance by up to 79%.

Learner Autonomy in EFL Online Classes in Indonesia: Students’ Voices

While learner autonomy has proved to be one of the determinants of successful language learning, little has been scrutinized when implemented in EFL online learning settings. This study aimed to investigate learner autonomy in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) online classes as viewed from the students’ standpoints. Through a mixed-method approach, the researchers collected data both quantitatively and qualitatively using questionnaires and interviews. As many as 513 students from 8 universities across Indonesia filled out the questionnaires, and 10 of them were interviewed to corroborate the findings. The quantitative data were converted into percentages, while the qualitative ones were analyzed using content analysis by categorizing them into themes, coding, and evaluating to find connections. The findings show that most students (80.5%) had positive attitudes towards their autonomy during English online learning, as indicated in their motivation to be self-reliant. Even so, this positive attitude did not imply satisfactory learning outcomes, for there were only 18.5% of the students who got an A in their English course. To make learner autonomy impact achievement, lecturers could take pedagogical measures, such as encouraging peer-tutoring, selecting interesting and easy-to-use online learning platforms, and implementing the Project-Based Learning model. These findings imply that teachers should be more thoughtful in selecting learning activities and settings that could stimulate the development of learner autonomy.

Meaningful Zoom Israel Education?: A 2020 Coronavirus Case Study on Emotionally Engaging Israel Learning

ABSTRACT A Jewish high school adopted different models of online Zoom learning for the 2020-2021 schoolyear; research was conducted in two Israel studies classes that taught the same content, but one class was fully online and the other was a blended learning environment. The purpose of the study was to understand whether meaningful learning can be conducted online. The qualitative results showed that meaningful learning happened in both cohorts. The significance of the findings are relevant to educators in many disciplines as they show that despite a change in learning site, effective and meaningful education is attainable in online learning settings.

Online Learning in the Quran Reading Class during Covid-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced higher-education institutions to switch to emergency online learning. This situation has also challenged the Muslim communities and institutions across the world to shift to the online mode of teaching Quran and Islamic studies. This research explored undergraduate students’ and instructors’ perceptions of the emergency online learning of Quran reading in Indonesia. Several aspects were analysed to compare the students’ perspective towards face-to-face class versus online learning, including class interaction, learning experience, motivation, satisfaction and comfort level. The study also compared students’ Quran reading performance in the online-learning setting with the records from a traditional face-to-face class during the previous year. The survey and performance data were obtained from 923 students. The findings indicated no significant difference in students’ performance between Quran reading classes in face-to-face and online classroom settings. Furthermore, although students and instructors felt that some aspects had changed, they generally tended to accept the Quran class in online mode. This is likely because, amidst the pandemic, students and instructors have no other options except to adapt to the rapid change and embrace the transition. Nevertheless, the study indicated signs of fatigue and reduction in the students’ acceptance of the Quran online learning over time.