Engaging with online post-graduate students, within a “compulsory choice” framework
Format Type
Plenary
Format Type
Paper
Start Date
13-1-2021 4:20 PM
End Date
13-1-2021 4:40 PM
Abstract
My role as Lecturer for “Qualitative Methods in Health Research” has me teaching online students for a Trimester (13 weeks) or a Semester (15 weeks). The course is a directed and/or core course across 18 different Graduate Diploma, Certificate and Masters’ degrees at my institution, The University of Newcastle, Australia.
Students enroll from around the world, but may have limited options from which to construct their study experience. Many tell me they take my course as it is “the last subject to complete the(ir) degree”. I question how this “compulsory choice” influences their desire to engage with course content. With each new student cohort, I reflect on approaches which haven’t worked, and consider what I could do instead.
Have my different approaches worked? Not always. Shall I keep striving to engage? Absolutely. I need to re-learn what ‘engagement’ means to students each time I teach, but feel it’s necessary, in order to learn which practices challenge my students the most and which modes of teaching they feel best creates knowledge together. Engaging enables me to remain mindful of student ‘choice’ - how can my students begin to negotiate engagement if they feel they don’t have choices, and are relegated to passive consumers as opposed to active meaning makers?
This presentation details my two-year quest to engage with my ever-changing cohort of online students – as I try to negate the mystery of negotiating engagement with students when they are enrolled for a short time, not necessarily for a good time.
Keywords
Online, engagement, student choice
ORCID ID
0000-0002-5972-3815
Engaging with online post-graduate students, within a “compulsory choice” framework
My role as Lecturer for “Qualitative Methods in Health Research” has me teaching online students for a Trimester (13 weeks) or a Semester (15 weeks). The course is a directed and/or core course across 18 different Graduate Diploma, Certificate and Masters’ degrees at my institution, The University of Newcastle, Australia.
Students enroll from around the world, but may have limited options from which to construct their study experience. Many tell me they take my course as it is “the last subject to complete the(ir) degree”. I question how this “compulsory choice” influences their desire to engage with course content. With each new student cohort, I reflect on approaches which haven’t worked, and consider what I could do instead.
Have my different approaches worked? Not always. Shall I keep striving to engage? Absolutely. I need to re-learn what ‘engagement’ means to students each time I teach, but feel it’s necessary, in order to learn which practices challenge my students the most and which modes of teaching they feel best creates knowledge together. Engaging enables me to remain mindful of student ‘choice’ - how can my students begin to negotiate engagement if they feel they don’t have choices, and are relegated to passive consumers as opposed to active meaning makers?
This presentation details my two-year quest to engage with my ever-changing cohort of online students – as I try to negate the mystery of negotiating engagement with students when they are enrolled for a short time, not necessarily for a good time.