STUDENTS’ PREFERENCE FOR TYPES OF ONLINE ENGAGEMENT

Abstract

Teaching in this post COVID era has prompted instructors to depend on online teaching modes. There are as much studies on exploring the advantages and drawbacks of online learning as there are on the challenges that students and instructors faced. Studies on online learning are also focused on improving online teaching so students/learners gain as much in online learning as they would in face-to-face classrooms. However, are online classes providing enough engagement to students? Do the students feel engaged during online sessions? This study explores the perception of students on the types of engagement students preferred for online classes. 75 students participated in the study. The instrument used is a questionnaire with 27 items using a 5 Likert scale such as 1 for Strongly Disagree, 2 is for Disagree, 3 is for Undecided, 4 is for Agree and 5 is for Strongly Agree. The categories in the questionnaire are emotional engagement, social and behavioural engagement. In addition to that, categories such as collaborative engagement and emotional engagement were also explored. Findings revealed students were positive towards the different types of engagement. This study also showed students put high value on collaborative and emotional engagement in online class. The findings of this study contributed to the body of conceptual and pedagogical knowledge towards online learning.