Navigating the Landscape of Online Learning: Insights and Strategies for Effective Student Engagement

Richard Walker, Assistant Director (Digital Education) at University of York

In the past couple of years, there has been a lively debate about the lasting impact of the emergency remote teaching (ERT) phase on the student experience within higher education. This has opened up a discussion about how learning might be best supported through the use of educational technologies. The shift to online teaching served as a crash course for many instructors in the use of unfamiliar tools and techniques. Teaching staff were expected to become familiar with new skills as online learning designers and tutors with unprecedented speed, and many faced a steep learning curve in doing so.

What has been overlooked in the discussion is the student experience of having to quickly develop the skills to engage as fully online learners. Particularly for new undergraduates enrolling in programmes during the ERT phase, the transition to online learning was a challenging experience without the necessary support provision being put in place for them. There are still a lot of assumptions about Gen Z and their perceived level of digital skills and intuition to navigate university learning platforms effortlessly, without a formal induction process being offered to them. The generalisation of digital aptitudes for Gen Z and the whole digital native mythology has largely been debunked, but it appears that the harmful consequences of this way of thinking persist in some institutional practices, with students not receiving the support that they need to engage effectively with online systems.  

The student panellists at the 2023 Association for Learning Technology conference (Warwick University, United Kingdom) all reported how the absence of induction and technology support during the ERT phase contributed to the difficulties that they encountered in completing study tasks during the online teaching phase, as well as later on in hybrid learning contexts with the return to campus-based teaching. The absence of structured support raised anxiety levels and led to a feeling of isolation, as they struggled alone. Another key message that panellists raised related to the need for students to have a safe space to network with their peers and to seek out informal support, as and when they need it. The absence of community and a supportive social network was felt to be a major loss during the pandemic, a finding corroborated in a recent Blended Learning Review report (2022) commissioned by the UK Office for Students.

"Flexible online learning is valued – but guidance and scaffolding of learning tasks are seen as essential to support effective student engagement."

Research that we have been conducting at the University of York on the online learning experience, covering both during the pandemic and return to campus-based teaching, has revealed a number of key insights regarding how we should be helping students to engage effectively with digital learning. First and foremost, there is no typical student experience and the generalisations that we make about learning preferences and aptitudes to use technology are often misplaced and unhelpful, given the diversity of the learners who are enrolling in our study programmes. The reality is that there is not just ‘one’ student experience with learning technology. It is a far more complex picture, and our research identified a clear tension between the desire that some individual learners have for flexible engagement in online activities, with a need for structure in the way that their learning is managed.

The key message from our research is that students value structured interaction and learning designs that make the most of connections with staff and with each other (peer-to-peer), enabled through the use of learning technologies. Flexible online learning is valued – but guidance and scaffolding of learning tasks are seen as essential to support effective student engagement.  Without this, online learning can run into difficulties. Take, for instance, flipped learning contexts in which the conceptual learning is addressed first through online study tasks (e.g. through a review of mini-lectures, and key readings followed by reflective exercises); limited guidance and feedback on the performance of these tasks may lead to students falling behind and either not attending the in-person classes, or attending but struggling to keep up with the targeted learning. Our research confirms what we have known for a while now – that students value structured feedback opportunities from a 'formative assessment' perspective, but also in terms of the ongoing support they receive as they progress through a course.

Looking to the future, there are clear implications for how programme teams should design their courses and support their students with online activities and the use of learning technologies, with close attention paid to:

• Study skills support for online learning, with tips on managing workload (peer-assisted learning workshops may serve as one way of addressing this provision);

• Scaffolding of learning and support for independent study (through instructor-led interaction and feedback to learners);

• Support and confidence building in the development of individual study methods.

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