Keywords

Fully Online Learning, Community of Inquiry Framework, Qualitative Research, Interviews and Course Content Analyses

Abstract

Fully online learning provides flexibility students appreciate but can be impersonal and socially isolating. Students can experience lower achievement and more frequent course withdrawal because they struggle to connect to the content, instructor, and other students. Twelve experienced general education instructors from a large university were interviewed to understand how they notice and support students who are at risk of underachieving or failing fully online courses. Interview data were triangulated using course content analyses from two of the instructors’ online courses. Thematic data analysis was guided by the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework.

Instructors in smaller courses use a variety of strategies to actively notice and support struggling learners, but instructors of large courses relied on more passive strategies. To support students, instructors try to humanize themselves and their courses, be compassionate, generate community within the course, and use effective course design strategies. However, humanizing their courses and being compassionate are emotional labor with the constant effort to be nice, flexible, and accommodating to student’s needs. The emotional labor might potentially lead to burnout and frustration among instructors.

While the CoI framework offers helpful guidance for instructors to provide instructor, social, and cognitive presence in small courses, the framework is less useful in large online courses. CoI also does not account for emotional labor and its costs to instructors. Recommendations for new general education instructors include strategies to support struggling students more efficiently and the need to better support instructors to provide social and instructor presence that scales to larger courses.

Completion Date

2024

Semester

Fall

Committee Chair

Boote. David

Degree

Doctor of Education (Ed.D.)

College

College of Community Innovation and Education

Department

Department of Learning Sciences and Educational Research

Degree Program

Curriculum and Instruction

Format

PDF

Identifier

DP0029041

Language

English

Release Date

12-15-2024

Access Status

Dissertation

Campus Location

Orlando (Main) Campus

Accessibility Status

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