Professional Learning Goals

As e-learning teachers, we increased the levels of student engagement by:

• Developing knowledge of best practices for student engagement according to the literature
• Developing an understanding of students’ perceptions about what helps them to remain engaged and be successful in online courses
• Using the conclusions from our research to help shape our practice in our online courses going forward

Activities and Resources

• Literature survey: background research focused on student engagement in e-learning environments, specifically high school students and Canadian sources. See “Resources Used” for a resources list.
• Survey:
  • Created a survey based on our background research
  • Deployed survey through the Upper Grand District School Board and the Thames Valley District School Board
  • Evaluated survey looking for correlations between engagement and other variables
• Emails to e-learning teachers and students when deploying the survey
• Parental consent forms for participants from boards other than the Upper Grand District School Board

Unexpected Challenges

• Although this was not entirely unexpected, we confirmed that there has been very little primary research conducted with high school e-learners and even less with Canadian high school students
• Barriers to primary research when trying to access students in other boards
  • We encountered fairly onerous protocols when attempting to gain access to students in other Ontario boards. These included the requirement to have our research study reviewed and approved by a committee which in some cases only met every two months, as well as requiring individual parental consent for each student in order for them to be included in the study, even though the study is not controversial and is completely anonymous. Given our resources, this was prohibitive. Therefore, for students who were not part of our board, we sampled only those who were 18 or older.
• Accessing retention data. Deciding which teachers we might interview about their attempts to engage students was complicated by the limited availability of historical data on e-learning teachers. As a result, we chose not to carry through with interviewing the very small sample of teachers who met the criteria for high-retaining teachers who we defined as: after the settling in period of three weeks, retained and passed 80 per cent of students.
• A potential union concern in some boards about how the data might be used against teachers. However, because there were no evaluative statements about teachers and because the data is an aggregate of two boards’ responses and because there was no way for respondents to comment on individual teachers, then there should be no concern about the data having a negative impact on union members.

Enhancing Student Learning and Development

• We have a better idea of what does and does not help students remain engaged: quick, predictable response times from the teacher; being able to ask for help (and getting it); clearly communicated evaluation; clear guidelines about acceptable online behaviour (although we’re not entirely sure whether this is about feeling safe i.e., insisting on a respectful tone in discussion posts).
• We have a better idea of what kinds of skills students are developing in their e-learning courses:
  • Working on their own (the e-learning course helped them develop this skill in both engaged and disengaged)
  • Digital skills
  • Using a calendar to stay organized
  • Managing their time
  • Asking for help
    
• Our literature survey helped us to understand that because we are still in the frontier of e-learning, there is very little domain-specific preparation available for either teachers or administrators
• We believe that students need to be provided with preparation for taking online courses. This could be facilitated as part of a short unit in Careers given that so much more of school and work is conducted online, and could make use of pre-existing tools created by the Michigan Virtual School. These tools include: (1) a diagnostic rubric that helps students assess their readiness for e-learning and then directs them to; (2) components of an online course designed to help them work on their weaknesses with regard to e-learning.

Sharing

• 2017 CANeLearn Symposium: To date, one of our members has shared our research, including some data analysis which demonstrates a relationship between student perceptions and engagement. Here is her presentation: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1ZlPMnASRjxsbo4UYWv8vY6CVqKsnZOb-GdSW3U1C6nA/edit?usp=sharing
• We plan to share our findings within our board at the annual learning fair in August, as well as at the BOLTT (Bringing Online Teachers Together)
  Conference, fall 2017

Project Evaluation

Learning Goals Achieved

• We have gleaned a number of best practices based on the limited research available and in our survey we tested some of these ideas to find out whether they matter to students. In some cases, they do and in some cases, they do not.
• The survey was constructed using our background research to inform our questions. We included a mathematician to help guide us in understanding what kinds of data could be reasonably derived from particular questions and how the question type might affect the results.
• The survey was deployed as widely as we could manage given the time, financial constraints and barriers to research we encountered
• We have pondered the student data, and have begun to incorporate this in our online teaching practice
• We have also gleaned some information that might enhance how students are prepared for and counselled into e-learning courses

Changes to Approach

• Our survey yielded only a small sample (109 student responses and teacher responses). For this reason, any future research should include a financial and strategic plan to meet the research requirements of other boards.

Next Steps

• Do an expanded survey including two or three other boards
• Mine the data by stream