Student Engagement and Participation in Online Classes
Class Participation in Face-to-Face Settings
The inability to engage in discussions and limited student participation is often cited as a major concern by professors who have traditionally taught face-to-face (F2F) classes but had to switch over to online instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic. Faculty have historically relied on verbal and non-verbal clues to adapt their classroom instruction. Even in synchronous online classes, many faculty have wondered if the students are actually present on the other end and if they are – are they in the right mental state and in a conducive learning environment to assimilate the material being presented via zoom or other similar platforms? Traditionally, class participation is viewed as an important component of learning and a strong measure of student engagement. There is however a growing body of evidence that oral participation in the classroom is a weak indicator of student engagement at best and most likely provides no appreciable evidence of how well a student is engaged with the subject matter [1]. Student engagement is multifaceted and comprises of cognitive, emotional and behavioral components that class participation does not fully measure [2].
Student Engagement in Online Settings
If nonverbal communication is a better indicator of student engagement in classes, then are we out of luck in the online modality? Even is fairly small synchronous online classes, it is often not possible to see every student even when they all have their cameras on. There might be really genuine reasons (e.g., bandwidth constraints) why a student might want their cameras off [4]. Doing so might actually help them engage better. When I first started teaching online classes, I insisted students to un-mute their mic and answer questions. As with my F2F lectures, I saw it was the same set of students who took that bait over and over again. I also noticed that some students would send me a “private chat message” rather than answer verbally. Clearly, these were students with “communication apprehension”. They wanted to engage in the class but just not orally.
Education researchers use the word ‘communication apprehension’ to mean students not wanting participate orally in the classroom. The online modality allows for non-oral communication (e.g., private chat) that students find less apprehensive. It took me a little while to find the best way to keep the chat box open and consciously look at it. Yes, it would have been lot easier for me if the students un-muted and spoke, instead of sending private chat messages. But I realized there are greater gains to student engagement if I exploited the technology better rather than have the students confirm to my archaic norms. Private chat helped overcome the “oral communication apprehension” and lead to greater participation and engagement albeit privately and non-orally. I could maintain the anonymity of the student but tell the class what their answer or perspective was to foster additional discussion.
As a “GenXer” I had a late exposure to emoticons in life. Over the years, I have actually started using some common ones in informal communications :-). However, Millennials and Gen Z grew up with emoticons as part of their day-to-day vocabulary (especially in online communications such as texts and emails). Video Conferencing platforms (e.g., Teams and Zoom) provide a set of emoticons in their chat feature. These can be used to obtain nonverbal feedback from students (Thumbs up, clapping, sad, frown, etc.). However, there is an apprehension among students that this might be viewed as ‘unacademic’ and as such there is a reluctance to use them to provide feedback in classes [5]. I encourage faculty to check out the range of emoticons available and if you are comfortable, tell your students to post them (or send them privately to you) in chats as a way to provide feedback. Quizzes and surveys can also be easily conducted using video-conferencing platforms. You can use a post-lecture survey to see what concepts were clearer to the students which weren’t. I always put a “You Should Know” slide at the end of my lecture which highlights the main topics I covered and concepts/skills that students should know or take-away. This can easily be turned into a survey to get some feedback. If the vast majority felt the topic was unclear you could add additional material (asynchronously), give them more practice exercises or provide additional reinforcement in the next class. Online technologies not only help overcome what is lost from the classroom setting but also provide new avenues for improving student engagement.
Student engagement in asynchronous online classes is far more challenging than in synchronous settings. Student engagement in this case tends to be heterogeneous and individualized. Therefore faculty must periodically aggregate individual engagement to evaluate overall class-level engagement. Again, it is important to understand that participation and engagement are not necessarily the same and communication apprehension is a real factor that affects participation level even in asynchronous settings. Therefore, participation metrics such as number of discussion posts and length of discussion posts may not be useful indicators. Use of surveys, quizzes and other feedback mechanisms that allow anonymity are useful. An assessment of whether course objectives are being met throughout the semester (rather than in the very end) could be useful to evaluate the nature and extent of engagement and make mid-course corrections as appropriate. Needless to say, student engagement is directly proportional to the faculty engagement and particularly so in asynchronous settings. So faculty should think of ways to stay engaged with the class. Some useful suggestions that I have gleaned and implemented are weekly emails, sending notifications and reminders to the classes on deadlines and due dates. Posting tips and hints to assignments based on questions I got from some students in the class (this way the larger class benefits and has the same information and it might just help an apprehensive student solve that problem).
Taking Online Teaching Lessons into Face-to-Face Instruction
The COVID-19 pandemic gave a lot of faculty to dabble in online instruction. As universities transition from online/hybrid modes of instruction back to the traditional F2F modality, what lessons that we learned from online experimentation are worth carrying forward? In terms of student engagement, online mode offers several nifty widgets to increase engagement, especially from ‘communication apprehensive’ students. I think having a Teams/Zoom chat open during traditional F2F classroom could help students engagement/participation, especially from communication apprehensive students. The quiz/poll features in these video-conferencing services, can replace or serve as a substitute to options such as ‘poll everywhere’ or clickers that many faculty use to get student feedback in class. Chats can be saved and made available to students via LMS to document discussion. Some moderation and setting of ground rules may be necessary prior to their use. Use of standard emojis as a form of communication may help Gen Y and Gen Z students be more open in their online communication but might need some getting used to by faculty who did not grow up with them. It is important to communicate the limits of such usage so students know what is acceptable and what could be considered ‘unacademic’.
Student engagement is key to overall academic success, whether it is traditional classroom instruction or online teaching. Student verbal participation is not the same as student engagement. Interestingly online modality offers some tools and methods to reduce communication apprehension and improve student engagement. It might serve us best to incorporate them even when we transition back to face to face teaching.
References:
[1] Frymier, A.B. and Houser, M.L., 2016. The role of oral participation in student engagement. Communication Education, 65(1), pp.83-104.
[2] Fredricks, J. A., Blumenfeld, P. C., & Paris, A. H. (2004). School engagement: Potential of the concept, state of the evidence. Review of Educational Research, 74(1), 59–109.
[3] Neill, S., 2017. Classroom nonverbal communication. Routledge.Neill, S., 2017. Classroom nonverbal communication. Routledge.
[4] Castelli, F.R. and Sarvary, M.A., 2021. Why students do not turn on their video cameras during online classes and an equitable and inclusive plan to encourage them to do so. Ecology and Evolution, 11(8), pp.3565-3576.
[5] Phirangee, K. and Hewitt, J., 2016. Loving this dialogue!!!!: Expressing emotion through the strategic manipulation of limited non-verbal cues in online learning environments. In Emotions, technology, and learning (pp. 69-85). Academic Press.