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Student EngagementIn the context of Massive Open Online Courses
Student Engagement
Student engagement refers to how much effort and interest a student is willing to invest in
learning. Participation is one measure of student engagement that pertains to how involved the student isin his learning environment. Research studies on the learning process have revealed several
interconnected factors that affect student engagement motivation, interest, responsibility, self-
regulation, skill acquisition, to name a few as well as psychological and environmental factors. Student
engagement is being studied in order to help educational institutions determine what measures or
interventions to take to improve the learning process in a diversified student body.
study defining school engagement as a multidimensional construct !cognitive, affective, and
behavioural" e#amines school structure, environment, curriculum relevance, teacher-student relationships,
student-peer relationships, and providing students with the choice and freedom to make decisions and
their relation to student engagement !$ang and %ccles, &'()". *he results of the study validate previous
research showing that students are more likely to participate if their environment is socially supportive
and that they value learning more if they are allowed to pursue their own interests, are given clear
e#pectations, and are assessed constructively and consistently. +iving students the freedom to choose
what type of task to accomplish is only effective if the choices are related to the students personal
interests.
MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses)
assive pen nline /ourses are online courses that allows anyone with 0nternet to access
various learning materials !videos, readings, activities, e#ercises, etc." on a sub1ect matter. 0nteractive user
forums and communities are provided to encourage collaboration among peers and professors alike !2uan
and Powell, &'()". pen access to educational resources is an aspect of distance learning3 aiming to
provide education to third world countries as well as places affected by terrorism and war. 4ased on two
distinct pedagogies, /s are divided into two types5 /onnectivist /s and /ontent-based
/s. /onnectivist /s are based on the connectivist approach to learning which emphasi6e peer
review and group collaboration. /ontent-based /s on the other hand, rely on automated feedback
based on ob1ective, online assessments.
7owever, /s being 1ust recently introduced innovations, still have quite a few issues that
have to be resolved. 8ue to the rather large and continuously growing collection of /s online, it is
difficult to evaluate their quality. *he lack of a standardi6ed structure of /s make it hard to ascertain
whether or not a specific course is established. nother problem is the assessment of the learners as well
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as certification and credit due to them. Sub1ects such as literature and philosophy require more than an
automated computeri6ed checking of learners output. *he rather large population of a single course
renders it impossible to be checked by a single 1udge while employing multiple 1udges introduce a whole
new set of biases. ther possible concerns are cheating, plagiarism, and the concept of digital literacy.
Student Engagement and MOOCs
s more individuals around the world embrace massive open online courses as a successful
development in terms of distance learning, several studies regarding the implications and effects, pros and
cons, qualities and components of /s emerge.
Participation is considered to be an intrinsic part of learning which is why /onnectivist /s
or c/s target peer collaboration. Special interest groups and forums are formed in order to
encourage learners to e#change ideas and think amongst themselves.
&'() study conducted by oon-7eum /ho and 4. 9oon :im e#amines self-regulating
behaviour of students in their interaction with both their peers and their teachers in the conte#t of online
learning. 0t aims to determine which variables !age, gender, grade, the e#tent of mastery goal orientation,
importance of interacting with an instructor, importance of interacting with other students, and instructor
scaffolding for interaction" had a correlation to the self-regulating behaviour of students in the conte#t of
online learning. ;'< student participants enrolled in online courses wherein there was no face-to face
contact with either their professor or their peers. ccording to self-reports by the students, part of the
coursework involved collaborative and participatory tasks. fter the online courses, the researchers
administered surveys regarding the students perceived importance on his instructor, peers, and mastery of
the course content as well as the students perception of his instructors ability to interact and provide
scaffolding. *he results of this study indicate that the instructors= scaffolding for interaction most
significantly affected students self-regulating behaviours.
nother study by >engfeng :e and :ui ?ie !&''@", observes the contingencies between the
design of learning engagement and online course models, as well as online discussion types and self-
perceived and observable learning performance. *he studys results has similarities to /ho and :ims
study on self-regulatory behaviour. $ell-structured content together with support from instructors and
peers tend to reinforce knowledge-constructive interaction. /ollaborative learning and discussion are
more likely to encourage higher-level learning.
*hese results poses concerns for /s since most /s do not have utili6e instructor interaction
due to the sheer number of students enrolled in one course. 8espite the presence of learning forums where
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online students are given the chance to ask questions, not all will be recogni6ed by the instructor.
7owever, collaboration between peers and an integrated online course model prove to significantly
improve online students perception of their learning satisfaction and performance thus motivating them
to increase student engagement behaviours.
0n another study conducted by Pu-Shih /hen and colleagues !&'('", the Aational Survey of
Student %ngagement, which is a survey intended to measure the time and energy spent by students in the
pursuit of education, was administered to . G ?ie, :. !&''@"
*oward deep learning for adult students in online courses.
Internet and Higher
Education (& !&''@" ()F(;H
http://publications.cetis.ac.uk/2013/667http://publications.cetis.ac.uk/2013/667