Keywords

1 Introduction

The year 2020 witnessed the COVID-19 pandemic wreaking havoc on society and individuals throughout all aspects of life including education. As schools and universities in many parts of the world remained closed and classes were forced to move online, educators have been exploring new approaches and techniques as well as adjusting their instructional strategies to support students’ online learning. A critical issue that has emerged out of the emergency transition to online learning is how to create an engaging online learning environment in which students actively participate in learning tasks and achieve expected learning outcomes. Since the emergency transition to online learning posts unique and unprecedented challenges to all those involved, the endeavor to keep students engaged in the learning process requires timely reassessment and reconceptualization of the conditions under which student engagement can be fostered. To this end, this chapter draws on the development-in-sociocultural context model (Wang et al., 2020) to inform an empirical investigation into the environmental conditions that either drive or affect student engagement during transition to online learning.

2 Literature Review

The development-in-sociocultural context model (Wang et al., 2020) defines engagement as “the quality of students’ interactions or involvement with learning activities, processes, and contexts” (p. 116) and conceptualizes engagement as a multidimensional construct consisting of at least three components: behavioral, cognitive, and affective engagement. Behavioural engagement refers to the observable behaviours while students are on-task including the degree of effort, persistence, and active involvement (Reschly & Christenson, 2012). Cognitive engagement is defined in terms of learners’ mental investment in learning activities, including sustained attention, willingness to go beyond what is required, and self-regulated learning strategies to master complex concepts (Fredricks et al., 2004). Affective engagement refers to students’ emotional reaction to learning activities, learning contexts, and their own participation in learning (Wang et al., 2016).

A defining characteristic of student engagement is that it is highly context-dependent and amenable to the learning environments (Wang et al., 2020). Therefore, to understand the nature of student engagement, it is important to determine what learning conditions foster or undermine student engagement and in what ways. In this regard, the development-in-sociocultural context model posits that engagement thrives in contexts where students’ needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness are fulfilled. Competence refers to the need to feel a sense of mastery, efficiency, and effectiveness in one’s interaction with the social environment (Ryan & Deci, 2017). Students’ need for competence is fulfilled when they know how to effectively manage their learning and achieve desired learning outcomes (Skinner & Belmont, 1993). Autonomy refers to students’ need to feel a sense of volition, agency, and self-endorsement of their own learning behaviours (Ryan & Deci, 2017). Students’ need for autonomy is satisfied when they are given choices in learning activities and perceive learning tasks as relevant and meaningful to their own life (Assor et al., 2002). Relatedness refers to the need to feel a sense of belonging and making contribution to the social environment (Ryan & Deci, 2017). Students’ need for relatedness is met when they feel emotionally supported and cared for by instructors and peers in the classroom.

The abrupt transition to online learning as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic presents unique challenges to instructors and students alike, particularly with regards to student engagement. For example, Ali et al. (2020) found that students showed low level of engagement in emergency online learning due to frustrations with online technologies, difficulties in making personal connections, and the distracting home environment. Khlaif et al. (2021) reported that factors such as local traditions and family norms, lack of technical facility and support, quality of digital content, digital privacy, and digital inequality negatively affect student engagement in emergency online learning. Contrary to those negative aspects of emergency online learning, studies have also identified positive factors that support student engagement during the transition period such as perceived instructor presence and interactive communication tools (El-Sayad et al., 2021), effective use of synchronous and asynchronous videos (Ali et al., 2020; Lowenthal et al., 2020), household materials, technological resources, and family social capital (Domina et al., 2021). Few studies, however, examine student engagement in emergency online learning through the lens of motivational theories, such as self-determination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2017). The current study extends on the studies reviewed above to contribute to the engagement literature in this time of crisis. Specifically, it draws on the development-in-sociocultural context model (Wang et al., 2020), exclusively focuses on the environmental conditions that affect students’ basic psychological needs and engagement, and examines engagement in a higher education context.

3 Methodology

3.1 Background of the Study

As with universities worldwide, Vietnamese higher education institutions were also affected by the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. Almost half of the higher education institutions in the country (110 out of 240 institutions) changed from a traditional face-to-face to an online learning mode in an attempt to execute the stipulation of “suspending school, not stopping learning” by the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET). This abrupt transition presented higher education institutions (HEIs) in Vietnam with numerous challenges because online learning in higher education in Vietnam was neither supported by HEIs nor MOET before the pandemic (Pham & Ho, 2020). Therefore, various initiatives have been immediately undertaken to support students’ and instructors’ transition to emergency online learning, such as offering urgent training workshops for online learning and teaching, reducing tuition fees, supporting the purchase of laptops, and providing free broadband internet connections.

The higher education institution where the current study was conducted is located in a small province in central Vietnam. Due to its unique location as well as effective measures of the provincial government to contain the spread of the Covid-19, the province was immune to the pandemic throughout the year 2020 with not a single case detected. The institution, therefore, did not implement online learning during 2020. However, with the emergence of the Delta and Alpha variants, the new wave of Covid-19 pandemic has been going rampant again in Vietnam since April 2021. Lockdowns, travel restrictions, and school closures with more stringent measures than ever before were implemented across the country. The province imposed similar measures, and the institution under study has been implementing mandatory online learning since June 2021. Compared to the other higher education institutions in the country, this institution seems to lag behind in terms of its technological and instructional preparations as well as experience in conducting online learning and teaching. Student engagement, therefore, is of immediate concern to both instructors and institutional leaders. This study makes contribution in this regard by exploring students’ perceptions of the characteristics of the online learning environment and how those characteristics influence their basic psychological needs and their engagement during the emergency transition to online learning.

3.2 Participants and Procedure

Participants were 24 students enrolled in a broad range of academic disciplines at the university including foreign languages, business administration, accounting, instructor education, and social works. At the time of data collection, 11 students were in their first year at the university, 6 in the second year, and 7 in the third year. The university moved all traditional face-to-face classes to a fully online platform from early July due to the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in the region. Google classroom and Google Meet were used as the main asynchronous and synchronous online learning platforms, through which learning materials, assignments, tasks, and video conferencing were offered. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with each of the individual participants through Google Meet – a free video conferencing platform. Participants were asked about the extent to which they felt a sense of competence, autonomy, and relatedness during transition to online learning, what characteristics of the online learning classes supported or hindered their competence, autonomy, and relatedness and how those characteristics influenced their engagement. The participants were encouraged to freely talk about their perception and experience of online learning in Vietnamese. All interviews were audio recorded and transcribed verbatim by a research assistant.

3.3 Data Analysis

Thematic analysis with both deductive coding and open coding was conducted. The deductive coding enabled the identification of relevant excerpts pertaining to students’ satisfaction or frustration of the three basic psychological needs while the open coding allowed themes related to environmental factors that affected students’ satisfaction/frustration of basic psychological needs to emerge from the interview data (Braun & Clarke, 2006). The transcriptions were first read and re-read by a research assistant, and relevant segments pertaining to each basic psychological need and engagement dimension were extracted. Within each segment, initial codes that describe characteristics of the online learning classes were identified. The researcher then analysed the initial codes to generate themes. The researcher and research assistant finally met to review codes and themes and to reach agreement regarding grouping existing themes into larger ones. This process was repeated until the team was satisfied with the themes as well as appropriate naming for each theme.

4 Findings

The thematic analysis revealed three major themes related to characteristics of the online learning classroom that affected students’ basic psychological needs and engagement, namely instructors, peer groups, and technologies.

4.1 Instructors

Instructors emerged as a salient factor that both supported and challenged student engagement during transition to the online learning environment through buttressing or undermining their needs.

4.1.1 Relatedness Support

Seventeen participants reported that the extent to which instructors showed their understanding of students’ feeling during this difficult time and cared for their learning progress in online learning supported their sense of relatedness. Mary, for example, believed that instructors’ care and understanding of their feelings and situations made her feel that she could establish a good relationship with the instructor: “The instructor starts the course by asking how we feel, whether our family are affected by the pandemic and how we are coping with lockdowns. This makes me feel like … yeah … he cares about us ...”. In addition, the instructors’ warmth and care in creating a pressure-free and comfortable online learning climate also contributed to students’ sense of relatedness, as commented by Christine: “She’s nice. She did not judge us by our mistakes and encouraged us to freely express ourselves in video conferences. I felt less anxious and intimidated as I did before the (online) course started.”

4.1.2 Autonomy Support

Unlike the instructor emotional support that buttressed students’ feeling of relatedness in online learning, the extent to which the instructor supported students’ autonomy seemed to be limited. One of the most salient instructor characteristics perceived by students to undermine their autonomy was the instructors’ insisting on them turning on their camera during synchronous video conferences. Ivy, for example, felt uncomfortable when her instructor asked her to turn on camera during classes because she simply did not like everyone to see the background of her room: “I feel really uncomfortable … like when my little brothers or mother accidentally open the door and everyone see that”. Similarly, Harper did not have a room of her own and had to sit in the common room where everyone in the family is there doing their own things: “ … my family are there and everyone in the class can see that”. All these students believed that the extent to which they were engaged in the learning activities was not determined by whether the camera was on or off, and thus insisting on the camera issue gave them the feeling of being coerced and was not conducive to effective learning.

Another instructor characteristic that seemed to undermine students’ sense of autonomy was their instructional practice. Several students think that instructors depended too much on the textbooks and prescribed activities without adapting them to suit the specific context of emergency online learning. This rigid dependency on textbook in turn made the lessons and activities less appealing and interesting to students. Thomas, for example, reported that some learning activities in the online classes were too time consuming and less relevant to their goals and interest: “The instructor asked as to work in groups to prepare a presentation on our opinions about a (foreign) political issue ... It took us so much time to set up the groups in Facebook or Zalo (a popular social platform in Vietnam) and the topic was too difficult for us to talk about”. The comment above suggested that the students had little prior knowledge on this topic, which was from the textbook. To make it worse, the instructor did not make any adaption to the textbook to suit the specific students’ interest and the Vietnam’s context.

4.1.3 Competence Support

Similar to autonomy support, the extent to which instructors support students’ need for competence was perceived to be under-expected. Seven participants reported that they felt uncertain and less confident when their instructors showed high expectations of their performance in the online learning environment from the very beginning of the course. This point was made clear in Jenny’s comment: “The instructor sent us a document which includes information about how to use the online learning system and a lot of expectations that we should meet. To be honest, I felt lost during the first few weeks of the course”.

Contrary to instructors’ communication of expectations, instructors’ feedback behaviour was perceived by students to be a positive factor that gave them more confidence in their ability to gain success in the online learning process. Mary attributed this positive perception to the fact that the instructor provided feedback on her work through multiple channels such as in google doc during synchronous video conferences or in asynchronous google classroom platform in interactive manners: “…before we had to wait until the next class to receive feedback. Now, we can get immediate feedback because everything is done online …oh and I like the feedback in the track change function … it’s very clear and informative”.

4.2 Peer Groups and Technologies

4.2.1 Relatedness Support

Peers are the immediate social agents with which students interact within the classroom. In the emergency online learning environment, peers were also a source of emotional support that helped students feel a sense of relatedness in the online learning environment. Nineteen participants reported that they felt less lonely and more connected to the classroom thanks to their friends’ encouragement and support. The fact that students had been using social media regularly for communication and social relationships beyond the classroom, and that instructors had been using social media as a form of learning management system long before the pandemic had brought student closer together and reduced anxiety and loneliness during the emergency online learning. This point was made clear in Sophie’s comment: “We share the same difficulties, so we must help each other … we use Facebook for chatting and the discussion board in google classroom to interact over the lessons”.

In addition to peer communication and interaction, technologies also played an important role in supporting student relatedness. In this regard, all participants thought that Google Classroom and Google Meet satisfied their need for relatedness. Even though these were free online learning platforms, they incorporated essential functions for communication and organization of learning activities that, to some extent, provided equal learning experiences as they had in the traditional face-to-face classroom. Factors such as clear picture and audio quality (John), ease of use and quick access (Harvey), interactive discussion boards (Lily), and interactive visual aids (Olivia) were cited by the participants as positive learning experiences afforded by the online learning system.

4.2.2 Autonomy and Competence Support

In addition to improving students’ relatedness, technologies were also perceived to afford their self-regulated learning experience and sense of competence. Twenty-one students believed that the clear organization of learning units and the incorporation of multimodal extra learning resources in Google Classroom enhanced their self-regulated learning experience and gave them clear ideas about what it took to achieve learning objectives in each unit as well as the whole course. For example, Frank reported that the extra learning resources in the forms of YouTube videos, websites, and blogs enriched his self-regulated learning experience: “Sometimes, the YouTube videos help me understand a point that I could not when I read the materials … It’s really convenient and informative”.

5 Conclusion and Implications

Engaging students in the emergency transition to online learning during the pandemic is a challenging job that requires instructors to be aware of the environmental challenges and support. Through the analysis of the interview data in this study, three salient lessons emerged.

First, the instructor emotional support and peer emotional support played a crucial role in keeping students engaged in online learning during the difficult transition period. The role of the instructor and peer emotional support were confirmed in previous studies on student engagement in face-to-face learning context (see, for example, Wang & Eccles, 2013) and were further consolidated in this study. Given that the Covid-19 pandemic has made significant impact on students’ physical and psychological well-being, the shift from the traditional face-to-face learning mode to a fully online learning mode imposed further stress and anxiety on student educational adaptation. Therefore, in addition to the adjustment of instructional strategies and learning activities, the degree to which instructors offered emotional support and peers showed encouragement in the online learning environment was likely to help students bounce back from emotional distress and adjust to the new learning environment. The finding of the study, which indicated that the students felt emotionally supported by the faculty, seemed to contradict to the study conducted by Chiu (2021), who reported that students felt less emotionally engaged in online learning due to the perceived lack of emotional attachment and support from the instructors. Therefore, whereas the educational content, instructional approaches, technological support, and student preparedness are important elements to consider in emergency online learning, the emotional support offered by instructors and peers were determining factors that could help students with initial adjustment to and engagement in the new learning environment.

Another lesson that stood out from the data was the extent to which students’ need for autonomy was supported. In this regard, the study participants had relatively negative perceptions about instructors’ instructional practices, particularly the mandatory “camera on” policy and the rigid dependency on prescribed tasks in textbooks. While asking students to turn on their camera during video conferences had a number of benefits such as maintaining non-verbal communication, building instructor-student relationships, and improving instruction effectiveness, instructors should be mindful when implementing the “camera on” policy because it might not benefit students for reasons reported earlier in this study and in other research (see, for example, Castelli & Sarvary, 2021). More appropriate practices that took into account equity, inclusion, and diversity of the students and the situations the students found themselves in, such as offering alternatives, encouraging rather than insisting, offering rationales, addressing distractions, and giving breaks should have been adopted (Castelli & Sarvary, 2021). Instructors’ rigid dependency on textbook activities also reflected the difficulties that students encountered during emergency transition to online learning. Lack of preparedness and experiences with online learning and teaching seemed to be the main reasons explaining unrelated, uninteresting, and thus unengaging tasks. Numerous studies in school-based contexts have confirmed the role of providing relevant and relatable tasks to students’ personal goals and interests in supporting their needs for autonomy and engagement (Wang & Eccles, 2013). Therefore, the flexible adjustment of learning activities to be relevant, interesting, optimally challenging, and suitable for the online learning context should be exercised by instructors and online course designers during the emergency transition period.

Finally, high expectations for students’ success might backfire on those who have low sense of competence. Clearly communicating expectations to students is beneficial to their sense of competence as reported in previous studies (see, for example, Hartnett, 2015), but it should be handled with careful consideration of the learning context and student academic levels. It would neither support students’ competence nor engagement if we expect students to excel in the online learning environment amidst the various sources of stress, anxiety, and uncertainty induced by the Covid-19 pandemic, without giving them clear instructions on the strategic approaches and learning strategies to achieve desired outcomes.

Building on the initial evidence for an engaging online learning environment in this study, future research attempts can dig deeper into factors related to instructors, peers, and technologies that influence student engagement. In addition, future research can also examine questions on how those factors are perceived by students across contexts and cultures and explore instructional strategies and design practices that can be utilized to enrich students’ online learning experiences.