Proposing a Hybrid Campus: A Community Engagement Framework for Online Learners

Abstract

We expand on the work of Redmond et al. ( P. Redmond, A. Heffernan, L. Abawi, A. Brown, and R. Henderson, “An online engagement framework for higher education,” Online Learning, vol. 22, no. 1, 2018.) and their proposal of an Online Engagement Framework for Higher Education, setting the stage for an investigation into online course designs and pedagogical methods likely to foster increased student social engagement, confidence, and resilience in the online learning process. Our research builds on the student-engagement themes proposed by Redmond et al.: cognitive, behavioral, collaborative, and emotional engagement; we see these as forms of students’ capital that can be facilitated by online course design and instruction. This capital, in turn, helps foster students’ social engagement, which is linked to better learning outcomes, increased confidence, and resilience in the online learning process. Following a meta-analysis of contemporary literature on distance education, we draw on the community of inquiry and community of practice frameworks, identifying ways to measure these constructs. As such, we propose a new model — the Community Engagement Framework for Online Learners, which can be tested with survey data to identify elements of online course design and instruction most likely to influence students’ engagement. In doing so, we also theorize that a hybrid campus can be achieved for online learners through increased social engagement, which should likely, in turn, increase their confidence and resilience in the online learning process.