The COVID-19 pandemic forced universities to transition from physical classroom teaching into online learning rapidly. Although universities tried to return to regular teaching arrangements (e.g., physical classroom delivery) as pre-COVID-19, most Australian universities currently offer hybrid or blended deliveries to provide flexibility and convenience to students. One of the challenges in blended delivery is how to foster student engagement during online self-directed learning. This study aims to explore student engagement with interactive and responsive online modules before classes in Engineering Education.
An adaptive learning approach was employed in the online module design in the Advanced Reservoir Engineering course to foster student engagement during online self-directed learning. Adaptive learning is an educational approach that uses computer algorithms and artificial intelligence (AI) to orchestrate the interaction with the student and deliver personalised resources and learning activities to meet individual needs, thus, enhancing engagement. During weekly studying, students were asked to complete a one-hour online self-directed module before attending the four hours of class. The weekly online self-directed module aimed to guide students to learn new concepts through mathematic problem-solving processes. There were ten questions in each online module, and each question provided several detailed feedback once students submitted incorrect answers. Based on which incorrect answers students submitted, the provided feedback was to fill in their knowledge gap. Moreover, if students submitted a correct answer, the linkage between the current and the upcoming questions would be provided.
The results show that most students (102 out of 108) attempted questions 1 to 3 times until they answered correctly. However, six students didn’t try the questions. Looking deeper, among the 102 students, 46 were successful on the first attempt, 26 answered correctly on the second attempt, and 30 succeeded on the third attempt. It suggested that most students cognitively engaged in problem-solving activities until they understood the targeted knowledge. Additionally, the students’ satisfaction rate at the course evaluation was 100% with positive comments. An implication of this study in practice is that teachers have an opportunity to improve the quality of questions and feedback according to the percentage of students who succeed at the first attempt. For example, if only 5% of the students answered correctly on the first attempt and another 5% on the second attempt, indicating the question was complex. It should have been further reviewed and revised with clear feedback. Due to it being a small-scale pilot study, further investigation is required.