Encouraging and Increasing Student Engagement and Participation in an Online Classroom

Background

As technology continues to change the way we communicate, interact, innovate, and learn in most areas of life, distance education has become increasingly popular in the past decade. According to the U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics (2011), about 4.3 million undergraduate students (20 percent of all undergraduates) took at least one distance education course in the 2007 – 2008 school year. About 800,000 students (4 percent of all undergraduates) took their entire degree program through distance education. The National Center for Education Statistics also reported that the percentage of undergraduates who took any distance education courses rose from 16 percent in 2003–04 to 20 percent in 2007–08. In addition to these undergraduate students, about 800,000, or 22 percent, of all post-baccalaureate students took distance education courses in 2007–08.

Measuring student participation in an online course can be quite similar to measuring participation in a traditional classroom setting. Instructors know which students contribute most often to discussions, turn in assignments on time, show up in class or log in to the course, and effectively display their knowledge of the course content. Student engagement may be more difficult to quantify. While some view participation and engagement as essentially the same concepts, Ingram (2005) proposed that true student engagement consists of, “deep attention to the learning tasks and activities at hand, activation of effective cognitive processes that improve both performance in the tasks and learning, and usually a social context, especially in collaborative learning activities” (p. 57). In order to improve the quality of instruction and levels of student engagement and participation, we must first understand what challenges students and instructors face when engaged in an online course.

As the body of research about online learning grows, many universities have trained their admissions departments and academic advisors to tell students that online learning is not for everyone. Bell (2007) asserts that many undergraduate students who have performed well in a traditional face-to-face class environment may not be ready to successfully complete a course in the online environment, because online courses “require more learner control and self-direction than traditional classroom-based instruction” (p. 523). Conrad and Donaldson (2004) suggest that successful online students must be comfortable with technology, communicating predominantly by text only, and maintaining a high level of self-direction. If a student is uncomfortable in even one of these areas, he or she could find the online classroom environment to be more frustrating than convenient.

Rao (2010) completed a study in which challenges and success factors for students in an online degree program were examined. The primary challenge students reported was finding time to do the coursework. Issues with technology (slow internet connections, lack of knowledge about basic computing skills, learning the course management system) took second place on the list.