Authentic Engagement of Adult Learners in Online Learning

John LeBaron
College of Education and Allied Professions
Western Carolina University
Cullowhee, North Carolina, USA

Ieda Santos
Institute of Education
The University of Warwick
Coventry, England, UK

Overview

Through a description of two diverse instructional activities in computer-networked learning settings for adults, we intend to demonstrate in practical terms that purposeful, interactive student engagement is possible online. By "engagement", we mean purposeful, frequent conversation not only between students and their instructors (one-to-many) but more importantly among the students themselves (many-to-many). This paper is concerned with both types of dialogue. The two learning activities described below are simple in design. Each uses readily available, off-the-shelf server or client applications. In making our case, we discuss the need to design instructional settings that involve students actively in confronting professional issues emerging from their own experiences and needs. Evidence to support our case is derived from participant evaluations of the activities under discussion. Because each of these activities emerges from rather different instructional settings (one American University and one European University), the evidentiary methodologies vary significantly across the two cases.

Activities presented in this paper are drawn from two formal courses. The first is a graduate course, Theory and Research in Curriculum (TRC), offered in the University of Massachusetts Lowell's online masters program in educational administration. The main substantive goal of TRC is for students to examine curricular theory as applied to the realities of practice in leadership and instruction. Such inquiry is conducted in the context of the social, psychological and political milieu for curriculum and schooling. As for process, the course is designed to promote the learners' construction of knowledge and the application of scholarship to the practicalities of schooling in an environment that students find challenging, enjoyable, engaging and highly interactive.

The second course, Online Communities, is a graduate course offered by Portugal's University of Aveiro as part of the 2003 Multimedia in Education masters program. The main course objective is for students to examine the philosophical and theoretical foundations of online communities, with a specific focus on learning. The course is guided by a social constructivist approach, which emphasizes ongoing dialogue among all participants, including the instructor. The course is designed to provide students with opportunities to put into practice the concepts discussed within their own context, for example schools. The course not only requires students to be active participants but also places high importance on the socio-emotional aspects of human interaction.

The question of tactical efficacy, however, requires a broader strategic context for discussion. Accordingly, evaluative data are presented and analyzed across four iterations from one of the course settings (US University) for the tactical activities described in the earlier part of this paper. These additional data come from a larger sample size of students who responded to specific questions about the relative human interactivity and academic rigor of their online versus onsite graduate course experiences. Since students were responding generally to several iterations of a course environment designed with features similar to the ones described in detail, we suggest that a reasonable conceptual link exists between the case-by-case evaluations of the detailed activities and the more general results reported over time by learners on the larger questions of human interactivity and academic rigor. Although these two factors are separate, if we accept the notion that the quality of academic production emerges significantly from purposeful social interaction, we can make a case that the two factors are associated. We do not, however, present this paper as proof of such a relationship.

Along with the broader questions raised about the relative efficacy of online versus onsite coursework, the activities presented in this paper are supported by evaluative data solicited anonymously from students in the form of scaled and narrative responses. Students submitted their responses either through Web-based forms or paper-and-pencil surveys. Although such data gathering generates indicators leading to plausible conclusions in particular settings, it is not presented here as definitive research. To the course designers, however, the data are sufficiently compelling to be used to guide future practice and course design. As such, we believe that the results may contribute to field's ongoing discussion of online learning efficacy.

Literature Review

Human interaction has been considered as crucial to the success of all forms of education (Laurillard, 2000; Swan, 2002; Vrasidas & McIsaac, 1999). Computer mediated communication (CMC) allows for many different kinds of interactions including one-to-one, one-to-many, or many-to-many interaction. Yet, by itself technology does not promote interaction. Harasim (1993) stresses that technology requires human intervention in shaping and nurturing interactions in online environments. Roblyer and Wiencke (2003) add that activities must be planned to encourage and support interaction among course participants. Barab et al (2004) and Stepich and Ertmer (2003), for example, implemented a number of design steps and procedures in their online courses with the purpose of fostering opportunities for collaboration as well as a sense of connection and membership among participants in computer networked settings.

Barab et al (2004) also determined that the affective issues of trust and intimacy were crucial to the substantive engagement of participants in educational dialogue. Lock (2002) and Haythornthwaite et al (2000) affirm that if an atmosphere of safety and trust is not promoted in the course, overall participant contribution to the dialogue will be compromised. Additionally, Hill et al (2001) have suggested that the use of group work contributes positively to a sense of belonging and connection within the course, indicating also that reminders sent by the instructor once or twice a week about the regular tasks not only helped students to keep track of the activities but also assured them that the instructor was present and available to them. LeBaron and Miller (2004) also outline several additional activities designed to promote human interaction and social knowledge construction within the course membership. Among these is an "icebreaker" exercise through which students submit online biographical information about their personal and professional interests along with a pressing question they hope the course will help answer. Moreover, focusing specifically on the social aspects of the interaction, Woods and Ebersole (2003) researched the usefulness of personal folders or non-subject matter discussion boards in an online course. They discovered that the use of autobiographies helped foster positive relationships within the course community: students and instructor alike.

Countless methodological variations exist in site-based and online learning environments, making "this or that" value judgments between two poles questionable at best. Departing from the "no significant difference" comparisons based on such criteria as student grade comparisons (Russell, 1999), more recent research on the relative effectiveness of online learning has become more naturalistically descriptive. In the 1990s, Green (1999) observed that transmissive (versus constructive) pedagogy continued to dominate collegiate teaching online, and that research on the relative efficacy of online versus site-based learning was inconclusive. McDonald (2002), Ehrmann (1995) and LeBaron and Tello (1998) suggest that contemporary research has failed to address deep, substantive questions about online practice. In research reported by the Institute for Higher Education Policy (2000) on the effectiveness of post-secondary online education, the majority of examples selected for analysis were quantitative or correlational. Relatively few qualitative, naturalistic accounts had yet become available.

More recent reports of actual online educational practice descriptively portray an increasingly positive image of its potential to offer rich learning experiences. Koory (2003) affirms that her online version of an Introduction to Shakespeare course consistently produced superior learner outcomes than did the traditional version of the same course. Similar to Moore's (1993) suggestion more than a decade ago, Koory believes that certain courses are particularly well suited to the unique communications capabilities of online learning management systems that promote diverse modes of knowledge construction (one alone, one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many). She allows that the better outcomes generated in the online version of her course may, in part, be attributable to the self-selection of online students whom she characterizes as "often the 'very models' of ... an adult learner -- experienced, self-directive, task-oriented, interested in problem-solving and immediate application" (p.19).

Based on in-depth surveys of twenty-one post-secondary faculty at various American locations, Smith, Ferguson and Caris (2001) conclude that, notwithstanding certain limitations, online courses can provide rigorous intellectual challenges that promote deeper student thinking, and greater political equality between learners and their professors. Drawing on thirty years of post-secondary sociology teaching, Kassop (2003) offers ten reasons why online education equals or exceeds the quality of onsite teaching. Among these reasons are: the capacity for student centered activity, promotion of deep peer discussion, the provision of on-demand resources and services, immediate instructor feedback, and the opportunity for faculty rejuvenation.

Wilson (2002) compares student performance and satisfaction in an onsite versus online computer science course. Among other things, she found that students in the online course used computer networked resources "substantially more" than their onsite counterparts. She found that her online students appreciated the flexibility offered in this mode. Meyer (2003) presents evidence that threaded online discussions are particularly well-suited to promote higher-order thinking, student reflection, and "time-on-course-task" among students in two graduate-level education courses. Infusing media streaming in conjunction with SMART board technology into her undergraduate biology courses, Michelich (2002) offers anecdotal evidence of student class participation, appreciation of the video streams for content understanding, and improved performance on assignments and exams.

The evidence presented above suggests that computer networked learning environments can be richly engaging, challenging, interactive and enjoyable. Although the question of whether online learning can match classroom settings for interactivity or rigor remains unanswered, the importance of thoughtful, purposeful instructional design and execution emerges time and again in the literature. This suggests that the more important practical question should focus on actual tactics to promote instructional process goals, regardless of the course delivery mechanism, rather than the issue of comparative efficacy pitting online against onsite education.

Two Online Educational Activities

A major purpose of this paper is to present details of two additional learning activities designed to promote the peer construction of knowledge and to create connections between dry theoretical content and contemporary issues of policy and practice.

The Resource Treasure Hunt
Jones et al. (1994) describe indicators of engaged learning including "vision", where students are enabled to take responsibility for their own learning, self-regulate the learning process, and define their own learning goals. Learning tasks should be appropriately challenging, authentic, and multi-disciplinary to promote learner engagement. By presenting learners with meaningful problems that they would want to solve, they will be motivated to work through the problems and are more likely to perceive their problem-solving efforts as worthwhile (Jones, 1999). In an effort to promote original student research on major course themes, to promote peer knowledge construction, and to service urgent questions posed from within the student body, the fall 2003 version of U Mass Lowell's Theory and Research in Curriculum course launched a new assignment, the Resource Treasure Hunt. This activity was inspired by the work of Bernie Dodge and Tom March of San Diego State University who pioneered the very popular WebQuest protocols for student research (Dodge, 1997).

For this assignment, resources were researched, organized and presented in the form of a computer network "treasure hunt." In the biographical information supplied by students online at the beginning of the semester and posted in an expanded class list of student biographies, each student described a course-related educational question for which networked resources might be searched, sifted, evaluated and applied to the solution of the problem. One such question was: "I would like to measure the success of constructivist mathematics approaches to instruction of at-risk urban students". Based on the questions submitted with the original student data form, the instructor tried to match each student with a peer, pairing questions with students of similar interest so that the treasure hunt might benefit the researcher as well as the client.

To fulfill this assignment requirement, students were asked to develop their resource packages gradually throughout the semester, occasionally checking back with their "clients" to verify if they were on track, and to allow clients to refine their questions. Two-member teams were set up within the course platform utilities to facilitate all assignment-related communication. In their teams, students conducted research for the same partner who followed up on their research question. Hence all students were mutually accountable to their partners. After the assignment deadline, each student's work was linked from an open course page accessible to the entire class. The title page of one such project appears in Figure 1.

The following outline for executing this module is presented as a guide, not a blueprint for practice. Faculty who are responsible for designing and executing course curriculum are encouraged to augment this model to meet their specific curriculum and institutional needs. Each component of the model includes a set of tasks as well as recommended time frames upon which to be completed.

Figure 1 - Student Resource Treasure Hunt Table of Contents

The online evaluation results from a small sample of ten students responding to questions about this assignment were generally positive. With 80% students agreeing, 10% disagreeing and only 10% neutral, the assignment appears to have met its goal of promoting student research skill on peer-posed questions related to the course content. To a lesser yet still positive degree (60% agreeing, 10% disagreeing and 30% neutral) students signaled that they benefited from their peers' research. They also seemed inclined to use their partners' research results in their own future professional work (50% agreeing, 10% disagreeing and 40% neutral). Ninety percent of the responding students recommended retaining this activity in the future; only 10% advised not doing so. However, the assignment failed to promote the sense of peer "connectedness" that it was intended to create (30% agreeing, 20% neutral and 50% disagreeing). Ideas to remedy this shortcoming are presented below.

Open-ended student comments on the assignment shed more light on its strengths and weaknesses. Two students explicitly stated that the client-consultant nature of the project particularly helped them hone their own research skills. Yet others suggested that a clearer description of the particular research tools recommended (e.g., various ERIC tools, the University's e-library database) would have promoted their speed and productivity in completing the assignment. Issues identified with respect to this assignment included the lack of student choice about whether or not to do it instead of a more traditional, independent assignment, and who the instructor-assigned researcher/client partners would be. This is not surprising. Cordova and Lepper (1996) have found that student motivation increases with contextualization, personalization, and choice. Similarly, Iyengar and Lepper (1999) have found that providing students with choices increases intrinsic motivation and results in greater persistence, better performance and higher levels of satisfaction with their educational experience.

Therefore, future course versions may retain this assignment, but as an option versus another equally demanding independent assignment that students can complete individually. Future resource treasure hunts may also require that students select their own partners for this client/consultant undertaking rather than leaving this choice to the instructor.

"Coffee with Letters" and Course Group Work
In an attempt to promote trust, belonging and group cohesion among participants in the Online Communities course at the University of Aveiro, all participants were invited to contribute to the ongoing socialization activities. Two such activities are described below. Social interaction is the foundation for trust building among members of a course (Wang et al, 2003) and can directly encourage instructional interaction (Gilbert & Moore, 1998). Harasim et al (1995) affirm that social communication is a crucial component of a course activity. Accordingly, we suggest that online environments should provide "space" for students to socialize.

The objective of the Coffee with Letters was to have an informal place where participants would visit and "talk" about anything they pleased, except for course content. The nationality of participants was Portuguese. Portuguese cafés are places where people frequently stop by, have a cup of coffee and chat. The creation of a virtual Coffee with Letters forum was influenced by this culture. It was carefully designed as a virtual reflection of the real Portuguese café. Therefore, only the first activity was structured by the instructor in order to provide students with basic guidelines and to get them started. Students were expected to take over the activity gradually, though the instructor remained an active participant in the virtual café. Participation in this activity was not compulsory but it was highly recommended.

Students were invited to submit an evaluation at the end of the course. Out of thirty students enrolled in the course, twenty-six returned an evaluative questionnaire. Student perceptions of the social activities were quite positive. Many agreed that the Coffee with Letters forum and its attendant sense of community was their favorite aspect of the course. Open ended comments such as "Thank you for helping creating a sense of community among the students" and "Keep up the good work" support the proposition that students perceived a sense of community to have been created by this activity. Some students even suggested that this kind of activity should be implemented in other university courses. The majority (96%) pointed out that they perceived themselves to be members of a group, and all students agreed that they felt welcome in the course. A closer analysis of the messages suggested that students discussed a variety of topics, ranging from football (soccer) games, sharing pictures, congratulating someone, and exchanging jokes.

Concurrent with the ongoing social nature of Coffee with Letters, students were asked to work in groups in order to develop a final course project. They were allowed to choose project topics according to their own professional interests. Due to the nature of the project, students were highly encouraged to work in groups instead of individually. Each group was assigned a private forum in the online environment, to which the instructor also had access. In order to avoid group segregation within the course, a main forum was created to keep the whole group united. While the instructor kept a close eye on each group's activities, the main forum was organized to have students reflecting on many aspects the project, discuss important concepts as well as post updates and announcements. Each week, the instructor started a new discussion in the main forum. The topics for discussion were based on the instructor's observations of the groups' activities. Students themselves started posting resources, debating the principal concepts and suggesting structures for their final projects.

The course evaluation suggests that 92% interacted with their peers from other groups in the main forum. All students agreed that the activities developed in groups contributed to individual learning as well as to getting to know their peers better. Most of the students (96%) reported that the discussion in the forums helped them to reflect on the topics being studied. Others (89%) agreed they received useful feedback from peers regarding questions/or comments sent to the forum. A significant percentage (85%) reported that their knowledge about the course had improved substantially. All students agreed that the activities helped them to combine the course content with their own professional interests.

The evaluation shows that almost 2000 messages were exchanged among the thirty students participating in the course (more than sixty-four messages, on average, per student). Of these, 300 were exchanged in the virtual café. The results show that 88% of the students accessed the course several times a day. A strong majority (81%) also used the discussion groups many times a day. All students reported interacting with the instructor. By the same token, all also agreed that the instructor was easy to contact, encouraged participation and provided prompt feedback.

Academic Rigor and Human Interactivity: Online vs. Onsite

Are tactical online learning innovations such as the ones described above related in any way to perceptions of human interactivity or a sense of academic rigor among adult learners? Questions about these perceptions were posed directly in the online student evaluations of Theory and Research in Curriculum course. Results are shown over four course iterations, as tactical innovations were progressively incorporated into the course. Accordingly, we have a more robust subject sample (N=54) than the number presented for any of the discrete activities discussed earlier in this paper. All of the responding students were mature educators, each having had a rich background of prior onsite courses in their scholarly backgrounds.

Student responses on the question addressing the academic rigor of TRC online are conclusive. We posed the question "How challenging did you find the online learning exemplified in this course in comparison to traditional classroom courses?" Aggregating these data across the four measured course iterations, Figure 2 shows that 96% of the students rated the online course more than or equally as challenging as their experiences in site-based courses. Of course, several different factors can make a university course seem more or less challenging. Since the question did not specifically refer to scholarly rigor, we might presume that certain non-academic factors such as mastering technology protocols and maintaining the discipline to log in regularly contributed to the students' perception of "challenge". In the four course iterations leading up to fall 2003, however, ever greater proportions of participants indicated prior experience with online learning (and hence, prior mastery of the networked technology learning curve), without a significant drop-off in their perception of relative rigor. Contrary to conventional wisdom (National Public Radio, 2000), therefore, it is reasonable to suggest that students found their online course scholarship considerably more challenging than they had found equivalent onsite courses.

On the question of human interactivity, data show more marginally positive results. Again as shown in Figure 2, across the four measured semesters 61% of the responding students held Theory and Research in Curriculum to be more or equally human interactive compared to their site-based experiences. While these survey results show promising evidence of student satisfaction with the interactivity they found in these online courses, we recognize that judgments of "interactivity" can be rather subjective. What one learner values as high-quality interaction might fail to meet the needs of another. Open-ended student comments reinforce the ambiguity of their scaled evaluations. In a single course evaluation, for example, one student lauded "the lively interaction between professor, teaching assistant, and students", while another "missed the human interaction with the instructor". In another example, one student affirmed "the openness of classmates; [s/he] felt the group was more frank in the online environment". Another student, however, lamented the "lack of peer interaction [that s/he] might have ... during a face-to-face course". This disparity in student opinion about human interaction suggests the value of variety in communication methods; the importance of enthusiastic, on-going instructor facilitation (both for instructor-student interaction and peer-peer interaction); and creativity in the design and delivery of computer networked courses.

Figure 2 - Online vs. onsite "challenge" and "interactivity", four semesters: N=54

Additional Indications from Field Practice

The authors represent several decades of successful post-secondary teaching in online and onsite settings. Although attribution of student engagement and work quality solely to the type of course delivery mode may be specious, we can agree that the general quality of student output in online settings, at the very worst, equals that produced in site-based environments. Indeed some of the work generated online could not be produced onsite. As a case in point, the research treasure hunt described above depended critically on networked computing for its execution. Even in a site-based course, this activity would require blended online components for completion.

Additional illustrations of network-enabled student production appear in other publications by the authors of this article. For example, a three-week, continuous online jigsaw role-play is described by LeBaron (2004). Although jigsaw role-plays are often carried out in traditional onsite classrooms, their interactive depth is severely constrained by relatively short, truncated classroom sessions. When students are not physically gathered in the same location, they cannot "play", Asynchronous online settings, on the other hand, encourage "playing" on a 24/7 basis, resulting in deeper, more frequent student interaction.

LeBaron and Miller (2004) describe other socially constructivist online activities such as:

• a beginning-of-course "icebreaker" assignment that promotes rich peer awareness and supports subsequent scholarly activity,
• an interactive, online forms-based project organizer, and
• course-embedded audio and video tools to facilitate synchronous and asynchronous communication.

Although each of these activities generated positive student responses on scaled course evaluations, are we able to declare that they are "better" than their site based counterparts? We cannot, mainly because there are no precise counterparts. With appropriate designs, different delivery media generate procedurally different activities. We can say, however, that from our experiences as teachers in multiple delivery settings, online settings enable student production at least as engaging and effective as work generated in classroom settings.

Concluding Discussion

Twigg (1998) joins a chorus of observers claiming that ultimate victory in education's intensifying competition for students will depend on the relative quality of teaching and instructional design, irrespective of delivery mode. She describes a universe where learners have increasing options to choose the learning experiences that suit their needs. In such a world, Twigg suggests, only the best learning experiences offered at attractive prices will survive sharp market competition. Ely (1996) declares that the adoption of distance education should be driven by carefully assessed educational needs. Effective online instructional designs require transformed measures to capitalize on the unique capacities of networked educational computing. The simple replication of time-tested, transmissive classroom teaching methods will simply not suffice.

If we accept the premise that students learn from their successful confrontations with demanding challenges, our data strongly suggest that, if anything, online course environments more effectively promote student learning than onsite iterations of the same kind of course. In making this statement, we realize that several uncontrolled variables remain and that, by themselves, the survey data do not produce definitive conclusions. Nonetheless, we can declare confidently that the quality of assigned work, combined with the richness of student-student, and student-instructor interaction in the asynchronous discussion boards and the synchronous chats, equaled or surpassed their equivalents produced in the classroom-bound versions of similar courses. The data presented in this paper counter the argument that online environments are deficient in promoting effective learning when compared to site-based teaching.

Our experience supports the perspectives of such observers as Kassop (2003), Koory (2003), McDonald (2002), Meyer (2003) and others that debate over the relative worth of online versus onsite post-secondary teaching may miss the point of meaningful conversation about the efficacy of computer networked learning. Efficacy depends on the degree to which instructional purposes are well articulated, and to which the unique capabilities of all settings, online or site-based, are optimized to realize these purposes for the best possible learner outcomes. The comparative delivery/distribution mechanisms matter much less than how the instructional team manages the environment before, during and after students invest their valuable time, energy and money.

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Acknowledgments
The effective design and execution of online learning environments depend critically on good faculty development and support. At the University of Massachusetts Lowell, such support is generously and capably provided by the Division of Continuing Studies and Corporate Education staff. We thank our students for their perspectives and for their efforts as active members in online learning communities.

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