Abstract:

The recent pandemic of COVID-19 had as a result the majority of schools and educational institutions to turn to eLearning. Universities and colleges found it easier to adapt to the new environment, since the majority of them were offering courses online to some extent. But, this time, they had to offer all of their courses and not just the curriculum online and promote synchronous learning. One important factor for the success of learning, whether in physical or online environments is students’ engagement. In an online environment, engagement increases students’ satisfaction, motivation to learn and overall performance, while at the same time, reduces the sense of isolation (Martin& Bolliger, 2018).

In this paper, we investigate students’ engagement in an online course in Ionian University. We analyze how the course was designed and what were the outcomes in terms of students’ engagement. This will be reviewed by an online study that has been designed especially for the students who participate in the course. The aim of this survey is to examine how engaged students were throughout the online course and what could be done in a different way to making them more engaged.

Evidently, the results of this survey will be very useful for the development of future online courses. After all, what this pandemic taught us is that flexibility and agility is important, especially in learning environments. In addition, it is more topical than ever to design an engaging course, so institutions can respond in an immediate manner, should the future demands so.

References:
[1] Herrington, J., Oliver, R., & Reeves, T. C. (2003). Patterns of engagement in authentic online learning environments. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 19(1).
[2] Martin, F., & Bolliger, D. U. (2018). Engagement matters: Student perceptions on the importance of engagement strategies in the online learning environment. Online Learning, 22(1), 205-222.
[3] McBrien, J. L., Cheng, R., & Jones, P. (2009). Virtual spaces: Employing a synchronous online classroom to facilitate student engagement in online learning. International review of research in open and distributed learning, 10(3).

Keywords:

e-learning, COVID-19, engagement, synchronous education.