Reflective Student Engagement: A Necessity for Effective ODL Delivery

Abstract

PCF10 Sub-theme: Fostering Lifelong Learning // Education providers need to be effectively engaged with their students in order to better understand their expectations and therefore tailor their deliveries to meet their needs accordingly. In a normal conventional, face-to-face small class arrangement, this is feasible and even sufficient but not so in an era of mass education delivered through open and distance learning method coupled with student diversity and less homogeneity in their class composition. This arrangement presents a challenge for teachers to understand the peculiarities and expectations of their students. To achieve better inclusive engagement with students and to deliver learning content based on their expectations, a more formal means to understand students as learners becomes necessary. This calls for a method that can enable teachers to learn and understand students’ expectations of teaching, learning and assessment as well as their conceptions and views of learning, their belief system and their reflective thinking capabilities. Survey was used in this study and 100 students of National Open University of Nigeria, were randomly selected. Sixteen item questionnaire administered with 56 returns. Results showed effective engagement of students occurs through class participation, interaction and collaboration with peers, attentiveness in class activity, emotional connection – and were found necessary for effective open and distance learning delivery. Management needs to also make deliberate effort to enhance students’ engagement by being responsive to their (students’) needs as expressed from time to time, such as extra-curricular activities and creation of physical interaction between and among staff and faculty. // Paper ID 1117