Abstract:

One lesson arising from the disruptive effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on education around the world is that learning in the 21st century is no longer restricted by fixed learning spaces, student characteristics and traditional approaches. In March 2020, many countries enforced national shutdowns of educational institutions to contain the spread of the virus and ensure public safety by reducing human interactions. Since the initial transition from face-to-face to emergency remote education, many countries have sustained distance or online education from preschool to post-secondary. Transitioning to online education at higher education institutions in Trinidad and Tobago has transformed teaching and learning. Many higher education students in Trinidad and Tobago, like their contemporaries in other nations in the global south, are experiencing online learning for the first time; their course instructors are simultaneously experiencing online teaching for the first time. Thus, it is critical that instructors understand how transitioning to online teaching influences outcomes such as student engagement, interaction, satisfaction, and perceived learning to strengthen online teaching quality and improve student outcomes. This paper presents select findings from a study of pre-service teachers (hereafter referred to as students) enrolled in an undergraduate mathematics education course from January to May 2021 at a university in Trinidad and Tobago. The previously blended course was redesigned for online delivery for the first time during the ongoing national shutdown. Its structure, delivery, instructional strategies, learning activities and assessments were adjusted to scaffold learning and encourage student engagement and participation in the online environment. The research explored how students perceived that scaffolding strategies integrated into course delivery, contributed to their engagement, interaction, perceived learning, and overall satisfaction. Specific scaffolding strategies were integrated into the course to facilitate student engagement and interaction with each other and course content, and realise course learning outcomes in the online learning environment. These synchronous and asynchronous strategies included interactive lectures, class discussions, instructor-created media content, collaborative students research and problem-solving tasks, discussion forums, quizzes, student presentations and student-instructor feedback strategies supported by the university’s Moodle platform. The 33 students (M=8, F=25) were surveyed, anonymously, in June 2021, after university approval for their engagement. The online survey comprised closed- and open-ended items related to students’ perceived learning, course satisfaction and utility of learning activities and resources. Data will be summarized using descriptive statistics, correlational analyses, and narratives. This research is significant because it offers a Caribbean perspective on how specific scaffolding strategies integrated into an online course influence student engagement, interaction, learning and course satisfaction, during a time of uncertainty regarding the safe resumption of face-to-face education. Despite this context-specific perspective, this research expands current online education research to include perspectives from nations constituting the global south.

Keywords:

Online education, pre-service teachers, perceived learning, student interaction, satisfaction, scaffolding strategies.