Facilitating Students’ Collaborative Engagement in a Virtual Learning Environment: An Action Research Study

Conference: The European Conference on Education (ECE2022)
Title: Facilitating Students’ Collaborative Engagement in a Virtual Learning Environment: An Action Research Study
Stream: Higher Education
Presentation Type: Live-Stream Presentation
Authors:
Marianna Papadopoulou, Canterbury Christ Church University, United Kingdom
Hilary Welland, Canterbury Christ Church University, United Kingdom

Abstract:

The Covid 19 outbreak has had multiple and profound effects upon Higher Education (HE). It has created a new ecology that has fundamentally changed our ways of studying, working and relating to each other (Lashley, Acevedo, et. al., 2020). In order to adapt to the ‘new way of life’, HE has been going through a process of evolution. It is evolving in multiple ways: from within but also externally (in its relationships with and roles in the wider community and society). The data presented here are from a small scale, pilot, action research study with a cohort of level 6 students and two tutors on a dissertation module in a British HE institution. The aim of our study was to explore the ways in which the students and tutors have experienced the transition from face-to-face to online learning and the opportunities and challenges of virtual learning upon participants’ collaborative engagement. Drawing on positioning theory (Harré & Langenlove 1999), we explored the ways in which students and staff constructed the self and others in this virtual space; their perceptions of the rights, duties, roles and expectations of each other; their evolving identities as ‘students’ and as ‘tutors’ and the impact of these positionings upon their sense of individual, collective and relational agencies (Ligorio, Impedovo, et.al., 2017). Our data collection tools, questionnaires and interviews, enabled us to examine the participants’ discourses and underlying positionings. These findings have informed the development of a larger study and have implications for educational practice and praxis.

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