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A balancing act: a window into online student engagement experiences
Open accessAbstract
This article reports on a qualitative study which explored online student engagement experiences in a higher education institution. There are very few studies providing in-depth perspectives on the engagement experiences of online students. The project adopted a case study approach, following 24 online students over one academic year. The setting for the study was an undergraduate online Humanities programme at Dublin City University. The research question for the study was:What themes are central to online student engagement experiences?Data was collected from participant-generated learning portfolios and semi-structured interviews and analysed following a data-led thematic approach. The five central themes that make up the study’s findings highlight key issues of students’ sense of community, their support networks, balancing study with life, confidence, and their learning approaches. The findings of this study indicate that successful online student engagement was influenced by a number of psychosocial factors such as peer community, an engaging online teacher, and confidence and by structural factors such as lifeload and course design. One limitation of the study is that it is a relatively small, qualitative study, its findings provide insights into how online degrees can support online students to achieve successful and engaging learning experiences.
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“Engagement in online learning environments has a significant impact on course completion and academic success (Farrell & Brunton, 2020).”
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Metadata
- Authors
- Farrell, O., & Brunton, J.
- Affiliations
- Dublin City University (IE)
- Corresponding author
- Farrell, Orna
- Venue
- International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education
- Published
- 2020-04-29
- Volume
- 17
- Issue
- 1
- ISSN
- 2365-9440 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W3029595525
- Cited by
- 233
- References
- 42
- Citations by year
- 2026: 9 · 2025: 34 · 2024: 47 · 2023: 62 · 2022: 41 · 2021: 34 · 2020: 5
- FWCI
- 53.80
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- diamond
- doi.org
- Locations
- International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Dublin City University Open Access Institutional Repository (Dublin City University) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-sa)
- Arrow@dit (Dublin Institute of Technology) (submittedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Education › Online and Blended Learning
- Social Sciences › Education › Higher Education Research Studies
- Social Sciences › Education › Education during COVID-19 pandemic
- Keywords
- online student engagement, online learning, higher education, sense of community, peer support networks, student self-confidence, learning methods, course design, psychosocial factors, student portfolios
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