a perfect match blended learning and student engagement
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A perfect match blended learning and student engagementTRANSCRIPT
A Perfect Match: Blended Learning and Student Engagement
A Case Study on the Importance of Student Engagment in a Blended, First-Year Composition Class
Background
Kwantlen Polytechnic Institution is…
• Open admission*
• Teaching intensive
• Actively recruiting international students***Students are accepted based on completion of a high-school diploma, GED, or mature-student status, as opposed to being accepted based on academic achievement. Students attending open-admission institutions are sometimes unprepared for the rigour of university study, as opposed to students attending selective-entry institutions.
**BC Ministry of Advanced Education has made international recruitment part of mandate for post-secondary institutions, which compounds the issue of catering to students perhaps unprepared for the rigour of university in courses such as Academic Writing, where communication in English is essential.
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Background
Focus of case study is ENGL 1100…
• a first-year composition course
• required by most degree programs in the institution
• articulated with all equivalent composition courses in BC, which also tend to be required courses
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Issues…• ENGL 1100 often seen as a “problem course”
• Required course = learners often reluctant
• Appropriate placement (a variety of prerequisites = lack of consistency)
• Failure rate usually 30-40% (failure = below 60% or “C”)
• Many students retake course (sometimes two and three times)
• Active recruitment of international students compounds challenge (particularly in a course where communication in English is essential)
• Can create a bottleneck for students (4th-year students still taking 1st year requirements)
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Previous Research….Informal Research:
• Surveys administered over several years indicate students find the blended environment more engaging than either fully face-to-face or fully online courses.
Formal research:
• Results of an action research study surveyed successful students from four sections of ENGL 1100 indicated 91.5% of surveyed students believed the blended environment contributed to their success in the course
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Two Central Reasons for failure in ENGL 1100:
• Inappropriate placement (students do not have language skills appropriate for university-level writing)
• Students simply do not submit assignments
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Student reluctance to enroll in blended courses..
• Because KPU offers so few courses in blended format that students are unfamiliar with learning environment;
• Courses are labeled “partially online” and institutional research reports KPU students tend to avoid any course with “online” label;
• Negative experience with high school online courses, which are self-paced.
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Subject of case study was an ENGL 1100 course not labeled “partially online”;
Student expectation would have been for a fully face-to-face class.
RESEARCH QUESTION
To what extent can a blended environment help students typical of open-admission universities succeed in a required, first-year composition course?
Methodological Approach
Mixed Methods study employing Case Study/Action Research approach:
• 16 students responded to a nine-question survey
• Attendance patterns for face-to-face classes (both optional and mandatory) collected
• Online activity reports collected
• Student success rates collected and collated.
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This case study was a second iteration of an Action Research project completed in June, 2013.
The focus of this iteration was a specific group of students in one anomalous section of the course over a fourteen-week semester.
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Regular classes at KPU meet twice a week for eighty minutes; blended classes meet once a week for eighty minutes.
Students in this section were offered the following choice: they could learn the material online or they could attend an optional face-to-face class each week where they would be taught the same material in a classroom.
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In other words, students had access to a fully blended course, but had the option of attending additional face-to-face classes to review material offered online.
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Student attendance patterns were observed in both the optional and mandatory classes over a fourteen-week semester.
Initial enrolment was 23, but 6 withdrew over the course of the semester, so enrollment dropped to seventeen students.
ATTENDANCE PATTTERNS FOR OPTIONAL AND MANDATORY FACE-TO-FACE CLASSES
• 10 (of 23 original) students attended the first three optional classes;
• Attendance of the optional class dropped off sharply after week 3 as students became more confident with the online portion of the class;
• Attendance for the optional classes was 2 or 3 students each week.
Student Survey Responses (administered in week ten)
Of 16 students who responded, half indicated that they would not have enrolled had they known the course was blended.
All 16 responded that they were now comfortable with the blended format.
The sharp drop-off of attendance in week four indicates that their comfort with the format occurred early in the semester.
Student Survey Responses
12/16 indicated they now preferred the blended format over fully face-to-face delivery;
11/16 indicated that the blended environment was helping them succeed in the course.
Student Survey Responses
Most student responses indicated the blended environment was positive in terms of the values of…
• Routine
• Organization
• Repetition
• Control
• Flexibility
• Convenience
• Access to faculty
• Engagement
• Enlightenment
Student Survey Responses
Negative responses to the blended environment related to…
• Motivation problems
• “too much reading”
• One second-language student suggested that more in-class time is helpful for ESL students
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Final Student Grades
A/B: EXCELLENT/GOOD: 6 STUDENTS
• All attended every mandatory class;
• 5/6 viewed online lessons, most several times
• 1/6 viewed online lessons sporadically for the first half of the semester, but consistently in last half (as concepts became more challenging)
• For first writing assignment, 6/6 received “satisfactory,” “good,” or “excellent” grades (C+/B/B+/A-)
C/C+: SATISFACTORY: 5 STUDENTS
4/5 attended every mandatory class
5/5 viewed every online lesson, most several times
Significantly, though all 5 students ultimately succeeded in the course, each received “unsatisfactory” and “failing” grades (C-/D/F) on their first writing assignment
C-/D: UNSATISFACTORY: 2 STUDENTS
• 1 /2 attended all mandatory classes and viewed all online lessons
• 1 /2 missed 3 weeks of mandatory face-to-face classes, but viewed all online lessons.
F: FAILURE: 4 STUDENTS
• 4/4 missed between 3 and 5 weeks of mandatory face-to-face classes
• 3 /4 viewed all online lessons
• 1 /3 viewed less than thirty percent of online material
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STUDENT RESULTS CATEGORIZED BY
IMPROVEMENT
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Category One: Improvement
Category Student 1st Grade
Online Attendance
F2F Final Grade
One: 1 A- all all A
Improvement 2 C+ all all A-
3 B+ all all B+
4 B 8/14 all B+
5 C+ all all B
6 B all all B
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Category One students: Improvement
• achieved satisfactory to excellent grades on their first assignment, but likely would have succeeded in any learning environment—blended, online, or face-to-face.
• These 6 students are perhaps less typical of open-access institutions.
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Category Two: Significant Improvement
Category Student First Grade Online F2F Final Grade
Two: 7 F all all C+
Most 8 C- all all C+
Significant 9 D all all C
Improvement 10 D all all C
11 D all 13/14 C
12 D all all C
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Category Two students exhibited the most significant improvement:
• These improvements are significant not because the increase in grades is necessarily great, but because the students shifted from failing and unsatisfactory grades to (mostly) satisfactory grades.
• of the 6 students who fall into this category, 5 achieved a grade of “C” (60%) or better (the grade required to move on to the next level course).
• The one who did not achieve the required “C,” did manage to improve his/her grade from “D” to “C-“ (within reaching distance of “satisfactory”).
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Category Three: No Improvement
Category Student First Grade Online F2F Final Grade
Three:NoImprovement
13 F All 11/14 (missed 2Peer reviews)
F
14 F All 10/14 (missed 1 peer review)
F
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Category Three students exhibited no improvement:
2 students in this category failed their first writing assignment and ultimately failed the course as well
Both students viewed all the online lectures, but both missed three to four weeks of face-to-face classes and peer-review workshops
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Category Three, continued…
• While their failing grade in the first assignment may indicate that the students simply did not have the basic skills necessary to pass the course, one student in Category Two (who attended all online and face-to-face portions of the class) also failed the initial assignment, yet ultimately achieved a grade of “C+.”
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Category Four: Regression
Category Student First Grade
Online V2F Final Grade
Regression 15 C all 11/14 (missed 1 peer review)
C-
16 B- 4/14 9/14 (missed 1 peer review)
F
17 C all 11/14 F
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Category Four: Significant lack of improvement:
• The 3 students in this category achieved “satisfactory” or “good” (C/B-) grades on their first writing assignment indicating that they possessed the essential skills for passing the course.
• Ultimately, however, each of these students received unsatisfactory or failing grades (C-/F).
• Significantly, these students missed between three and five weeks of face-to-face classes and workshops, and one missed a great deal of the online portion of the class as well.
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• The eleven students in Categories Two, Three, and Four reflect characteristics perhaps more typical of first-year students in open-admission institutions—students who may not be prepared for the rigour of university studies.
• The attendance patterns and results of these eleven students indicate the essential importance of both portions of the blended course—the “knowledge” and “the knowing”…the fullness of “the generative dance” (Cook and Brown, 1999).
Conclusions
• The results of this research suggest that because of its emphasis on reading and writing, a blended learning environment—“the thoughtful integration of face-to-face and online learning (Mathios, 2011)—may help students in writing courses achieve success.
• Of greater importance, the results seem to indicate that the success is most evident with students who fully engage with the blended learning environment, but who may be struggling, unprepared, or under-prepared (students more typical of open-admission, as opposed to selective-admission, institutions).
Implications
• The implications of this finding may be of interest to KPU and other open-access institutions since a central concern must invariably be helping (frequently under-prepared) students succeed at the post-secondary level.
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While the student survey responses for this case study do not endorse the blended learning environment as a central contributor to their learning as overwhelmingly as the students in the earlier iteration of this study, the majority did endorse the blended environment as helping them learn.
In spite of some of KPU’s institutional research which suggest that students will not take blended courses (KPU, 2010), the students indicated a clear desire to take future classes in a blended format.
Responses were more positive than expected, especially considering that they had enrolled in a course they expected to be conducted in a fully face-to-face format.
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A further conclusion is that students quickly accept the blended format as equal to a fully face-to-face environment, and value not repetition of online material, but rather, different—“value-added”—material in the classroom.
This is supported by the fact that the one optional class in ENGL 1100 which was of a “value-added” nature (individual consultations) experienced a spike in attendance.
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Please send me an e-mail if you have any questions, or wish to read the entire study:
References
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