Abstract:

Student engagement with learning activities is always been a concern for educators in the online learning environment. During COVID’19 pandemic, when learning completely shifted to online platforms, it was quite challenging for teachers to engage students with pre and post-class asynchronous learning activities that were implemented as part of the Flipped Learning approach. Teachers cannot progress with planned in-class activities if the students do not actively engage in pre-class and post-class activities, thus disrupting appropriate knowledge construction. Additionally, it limits the quality of individual and appropriate feedback based on specific student learning needs. (Gikandi et al. 2011). This paper presents the findings of a pilot study undertaken at Middle East College, Oman, with an aim to propose a model for enhancing student engagement with asynchronous learning activities. The study was undertaken on sample modules chosen from various specializations, where completing the asynchronous activities of all topics was implemented as one task in the graded assessments. This study found assigning marks to asynchronous activities is effective in motivating the students to engage with asynchronous activities, particularly for the entry and lower-level modules. The findings of this study is intended to recommend approaches by which Higher Education Institutions (HEI) can adopt this model at the institutional level for improving student engagement with asynchronous pre-class learning activities.

Keywords:

Asynchronous activities, Flipped learning online, Student engagement.