Motivation and engagement in digital learning environments, at a post-secondary level
- Autores: Ina Ghita
- Directores de la Tesis: José Luis Rodríguez Illera (dir. tes.)
- Lectura: En la Universitat de Barcelona ( España ) en 2021
- Idioma: español
- Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: Elena Barberà Gregori (presid.), Marc Fuertes-Alpiste (secret.), Rosa Bruno-Jofré (voc.)
- Programa de doctorado: Programa de Doctorado en Educación y Sociedad por la Universidad de Barcelona
- Materias:
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- Resumen
The field of digital learning has rapidly evolved during the last seventy years, from initially being mostly concerned with how machines could help humans learn, to now putting the student at the centre of learning and aiming to understand phenomena that impact the success of students.
How ever, there is little research today on how the design of the digital learning environments uses motivation and engagement to shape students ’thinking and prepare them for becoming critically thinking, participative, motivated members of society.
Digital students have specific needs and face challenges that have to do with the lack of direct human contact, mediation of communication, asynchronicity, as well as managing their attention and resources during study. The overarching research question of this study was: "What motivates post secondary digital students to learn and engage with their course, peers, and instructors, in a way that supports critical thinking?".
To answer this question, a mixed methods explanatory sequential design was em ploy ed. The data was collected from a professor questionnaire (n= a longitudinal study consisting of two student questionnaires (n= and interviews, email, telephone and chat conversations with 10 of the students in the sample.
This thesis contributes to bridging the gap between aspects of motivation and engagement in digital learning environments that support critical thinking for post secondary students, by offering a holistic view of the relationships between these factors, a s students saw them. The experimental design allowed for a nuanced view of the experience of digital learning for university students. For educational practitioners, this thesis contributes to integrating the concepts of critical thinking and the practice of dialogue to motivation and engagement studies, moving research away from interventionist studies, into an integrated conceptualization of student experience in digital learning environments, where motivation, engagement and critical thinking are studied together.
