One of the aspects of teaching I am engaged in is reflective practice though I am trying to think about this in a new way. In a previous post (see also Col’s post on content and communication)I started to explain that student engagement is important in teaching and learning. Researchers seem to look at inherent student qualities which tell part of the story about engagement (see Ainley (2004) though there has been research into involvement (see Krause (2005), Goldspink et al 2008). From my perspective, I am interested in how I interact with my students to create involvement. Fresen (2007) in researching web-based learning identified staff interaction with students as one of the key factors in student engagement.
Reflecting on staff interaction I think that examining Approaches to teaching and Feature adoption will be of some use, though these two need to be allied to ‘use’ of the tolls within the LMS to give some idea of interaction which may explain in some small way staff/student interaction and engagement.
Approaches to teaching + Feature adoption + Use = interaction (a key factor in student engagement)
One way is to look at features within courses examining the features an academic uses within their course, incorporating Malikowski et al’s (2007) model:
Figure 1: Malikowski et al (2007) feature adoption model
and look at what constitutes a basic approach to teaching though with a focus on Gonzales Dimensions:
| Informative/individual learning focuses | Communicative/Networked learning focused | |
|---|---|---|
| Intensity of use | Small range on media and tools used to support learnign tasks and activities (mainly sources of information with small opportunities for interaction and communication) | Wide range of media and tools used to support learning tasks and activities (with emphasis on interaction and communication) |
| Resources | Web pages with information. Lecture notes. Links to websites. | Web pages with information. Lecture notes. Links to web sites. Discussion boards. Chat. Blogs. Spaces for sharing. Animations. Videos. Still images. |
| Role of the teacher | Select and present information | Design spaces for sharing and communication. Support the process. |
| Role of the students | Study individually information provided | Participate in a process of knowledge building |
Table 1: Gonzales (2009) Approach to teaching online
Placing an academic in an either content oriented or student oriented perspective and utilising feature adoption will aid in categorising the academic although this does not give an indication of the engagement of the academic nor of the student. What I have done is to reconcetpualize Gonzales (2009) using Malikowski et al (2007) so that within Gonzales a more definite distribution of LMS features are shown (Figure 2 below).
Figure 2: Utilisation of Malikowski’s flowchart in line with Gonzales approaches to teaching
Examining the data with student engagement in mind utilising hit counts, as an indicator of engagement will show that engagement is occurring looking at feature adoption through time.
To test the above model a query was run examining content within courses at CQUniversity. One of the interesting findings from preliminary research into Blackboard (Table 2 below) demonstrates that from 2005 to 2009 (Term 1) the courses with content files has grown 28% over those four years, with the average files per course rising by 18. There appears to be an interesting pattern developing, though more research needs to developed in this area, while files per course has increased the hit counts per student has not risen in the same manner as would be indicated by the data. One possible link here is that students are downloading the files, then printing them out to read at a later date.
Table 2: Content files on Blackboard 2005 – 2009, and average hits per student
In line with the model indicated above (see Figure 2) where Gonzales Dimensions have been modified with Malikowskis’ (2007) feature adoption model, the pattern that emerges from the data is that content far outweighs communicative practice on Blackboard across all courses through 2005 /2009 T1. The huge difference between content and communication can be partially explained by the difference between the ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ sciences but the fact remains that the majority of academics appear to not utilize the communicative networked focused features within the LMS (Figure 3).
Figure 3: Content vs communicative using the adapted model
The interpretation is that there is a huge difference between content and communication/engagement within sites. Another example of this is seen in the following data (Figure 4) where the simple query was run asking the question, “How many academics post to discussion forums?
Figure 4: Course Coordinators posting to forums
The figure is staggering even taking into account that some courses are placeholders for Honours, and Masters subjects. The sheer volume of Course Coordinators that do not post even when provided with a forum is an interesting fact. Of course, more research would have to be done to see if any internal or external factors are involved, but it appears to be very significant in light of student engagement.
Note: For more information on the Indicators project be sure to check out David’s and Col’s respective blogs.
Reference List
Ainley, M. (2004). “What do we know about student motivation and engagement? “ Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Australian Association for Research in Education, Melbourne, November 29-December 2, 2004. Available http:// www.aare.edu.au/04pap/ain04760.pdf.
Fresen, J. (2007). “A taxonomy of factors to promote quality web-supported learning.” International Journal on E-Learning 6(3): 351-362.
Gonzalez, C. (2009). “Conceptions of, and approaches to, teaching online: a study of lecturers teaching postgraduate distance courses.” Higher Education, 57(3): 299-31
Goldspink, C., Winter, P. & Foster, M. (2008). Student Engagement and Quality Pedagogy. URL http://www.earlyyears.sa.edu.au/files/links/Student_Engagement_and_Qua.pdf
Krause, Kerri-Lee. (2005). “Understanding and promoting student engagement in university learning communities.” Centre for the Study of Higher Education, Available http://www.cshe.unimelb.edu.au/pdfs/Stud_eng.pdf.
Malikowski, S., M. Thompson, et al. (2007). “A model for research into course management systems: bridging technology and learning theory.” Journal of Educational Computing Research 36(2): 149-173.
Filed under: Indicators Project , Indicators Project
