Engaging students in the community of practice in an online distance education course

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate how students can benefit from interaction and collaboration when learning in the community of other students online. Collaboration is vital for students' learning because they share ideas and learn from each other. It is crucial for online content to encourage interaction, which leads to collaboration among students. Although many academic institutions offer online education mostly to distance students, it is not known how different content is administered online, mainly on the Moodle platform. There seems to be no study that investigated the instructional designs, Moodle contents, and how the students' engagement can be enhanced in the online classroom of distance students by applying the Community of Enquiry model at the institution under study. Also, there seems to be no study that explains how students can benefit from engaging in a community of practice with other students during online distance learning in Namibian classrooms. This qualitative study was conducted at one of the public universities in Namibia. Purposive sampling was used to select 30 students who entirely study online with their lecturer. A detailed interview guide was sent to the students and the lecturer via Google Docs. The course content on the Moodle platform was also studied according to Moore's (1993) guide to effective student-content interaction. The study revealed that the students were not collaboratively engaged in the community of learning online, because the content dictates the students to work individually. Both students and the lecturer value lecturer-student and student-content interactions more than student-student interactions. Students understand the benefits they would gain from learning in the community of other students, such as the development of soft skills that they would require for employment after completing their studies.