3.1.2. VLE-based tools supporting course design and engagement
As already explained in section 1, when designing an online course, it is important to foresee the strategies that would help teachers collect evidence on how students interact with learning resources and activities. Evidence-based data help teachers improve their day-to-day teaching practice by showing what resources are not accessed by students, what activities are less engaging, and what topics or concepts remain unclear and require more discussions or hands-on practices. In addition, evidence can show teachers that some students do not interact with course content at all, and it might be a signal that students might be at risk of drop-out. Therefore, it is important to get in touch with them and discuss the situation.
In this section, we suggest tools useful to evaluate student commitment and motivation with the aim of readjusting activities and hence improving their engagement. At the same time, the proposed tools allow students to increase their level of metacognition regarding their learning and their engagement.
Some of the tools are:
● Discussion forum
● Group choice
● Choice
● Feedback
● Badges
Discussion forum
The Forum activity allows students and teachers to exchange ideas by posting comments as part of a 'thread'. Files such as images and media may be included in forum posts. The teacher can choose to grade and/or rate forum posts and it is also possible to give students permission to rate each other's posts.
The number of contributions to a forum is a way to rate the level of participation and engagement of students. Once learning analytics show little evidence of engagement, s/he can take corrective actions by designing a more engaging activity, by grading forum assignments and by setting up peer feedback activities.
Figure 2. An example of a Discussion forum in Moodle
Group choice
This tool allows students to create a group for a task, join an existing group or change the group, depending on the instructor's decision. It provides an opportunity to check and assess whether students are sufficiently engaged to join a group and to engage in the group activity accordingly. Any answer shows a certain level of student engagement. However, the lecturer should draw on his/her knowledge of group dynamics and learning behaviour to learn more about the group's choice or replacement decisions. A group choice tool may also be used by a teacher to help students plan their own learning by allowing them to not only create groups themselves but also to choose the date of the assignment presentation (fig. 3). It is important that if the tutor observes passive engagement of certain students, he/she should take note of this and contact the students by e-mail or by posting a general message on the discussion forum.
Figure 3. An example of a group choice activity in Moodle
Choice
The choice tool allows the teacher to ask a single question and offer multiple possible answers. It tool allows the teacher to create an activity in which the students themselves can choose how to develop a particular topic. For example, students can choose if they want to analyse and discuss climate change issues from an economic or legal perspective. The results can be published after the students have answered, after a certain date, or not be published at all. Moreover, the results can be published with student identification or anonymously. Giving learners the choice to decide what they want to learn increases their level of engagement. In this way, lecturers respond to their learning needs and interests. When using this tool, any response indicates the level of engagement and may serve as a starting point for a deeper discussion.
Feedback
The feedback tool allows teachers to create and conduct surveys and can be used for course or teacher evaluations. Thanks to this tool, it is possible to redesign a task or an activity that did not work well. The feedback tool can be used throughout the semester as well as at the end of the course. Throughout the course, feedback can be collected to investigate if students understand the key concepts presented in class, what resources they find most useful and what additional resources they would find relevant. Instead, the final feedback is related to the internal course quality assessment, where students are asked to share their insights and opinions on several questions related to the course content. Even though all surveys are planned at the beginning of the semester, some questions might be edited, added or removed, according to learning progress, issues or questions that appear when working with different groups of students each semester.
Figure 4. An example of course feedback (Trepule & Tamoliune, personal communication, 2022, MA study course “Concepts of adult education”, Vytautas Magnus University)
Badges
A VLE like Moodle allows teachers to assign badges, which are a good way of celebrating achievement and showing progress. Badges may be awarded based on a variety of chosen criteria and may be displayed on a user's profile or published in a badge public collection. Badges are connected with the process of gamification of learning and can be a powerful engaging factor.