Student Engagement in Online Writing Course

Rendahl, M., & Breuch, L. A. (2013). Toward a Complexity of Online Learning: Learners in Online First-Year Writing. Computers and Composition, 30(4), 297-314.

In this article, Merry Rendahl and Lee-Ann Kastman Breuch, both of whom teach first-year writing writing and professional communication courses at the University of Minnesota, describe a case study looking at the degree to which learner behaviors predicted success in two online first year writing courses.  Although other researchers have claimed that social engagement is a key aspect of student success in online writing courses, Rendahl and Breuch found that student engagement is a more crucial aspect. 

I chose this article to examine how learning theory translates into the online context.  I have long been interested in how learning works and looked to recent advances in cognitive science to provide explanation.  Ron Ritchhart’s Intellectual Character, Daniel Willingham’s Why Students Don’t Like School, and How Learning Works by Susan A. Ambrose et al suggest that a key element of learning is cognitive engagement.  On the other hand, Lev Vygotsky’s theories of social learning as well as Mikhail Bakhtin’s ideas about dialogism, John Swale’s acknowledgement of discourse community, and WAC and WID research showing learners moving into a disciplinary community suggest that successful learning involves social engagement, whether direct or mediated through texts. 

Looking for articles that applied learning theory to distance learning led me to Rendahl and Breuch’s article.  In fact, Rendahl and Breuch find their theoretical basis in the social cognitive theory of Albert Bandura who proposes a triadic interaction between environmental factors, student behaviors such as study habits, and personal factors such as motivation, ability, personality, gender and so on.  In their literature review, the authors note how writing researchers such as Linda Flower have also used Bandura’s theories.  In fact, although Bandura’s ideas form the foundation for this study, the researchers primarily focus on behavior, on how study habits contribute to student success.  In a way, of course, this makes sense, since these are most easily controlled by learners.  In order to examine these factors, the researchers used four different surveys which looked at study behaviors, attitudes, learning strategies and technology access supplemented with statistics from course management system, and interviews with students and instructors.  They learned that students spent more time interacting with course content than social interaction, either with instructor or classmates.  Nevertheless, students were satisfied with the amount of social interaction, and most were enthusiastic about taking another online writing class.  In other words, student engagement does not appear to be the essential factor for student success in online courses. Students may equally benefit from mental engagement with course content.  Obviously, this claim needs to be investigated further, but the article offers an interesting starting point for those who are interested in exploring how learning theories may shed light on online learning.