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=The design of e-learning activities is guided by the need to build and develop student engagement. =

Evidence
The Australian Council for Education Research (ACER) identifies that, ‘Student engagement is defined as students’ involvement in activities and conditions that are linked with high-quality learning. A key assumption is that learning outcomes are influenced by how an individual participates in educationally purposeful activities. While students are seen to be responsible for constructing their own knowledge, learning is also seen to depend on institutions and staff generating conditions that stimulate student involvement.’ http://ausse.acer.edu.au/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=13&Itemid=8

The ACER’s AUSSE survey of student engagement (2009) revealed that 12.5 per cent of first year students ‘never’ receive timely feedback on their work, 46.7 per cent never discuss their ideas from class with their teachers, and 70 per cent have never worked with teaching staff outside of coursework requirements. All this is on a background of research that shows that the contact that students have with staff are among the most powerful influences on positive learning outcomes. http://www.acer.edu.au/media/2624/

Analysis and reflection should be encouraged and practised rather than recall and information retrieval. Teaching staff should be supported in developing the skills needed to facilitate e-learning approaches that build engagement through active learning pedagogies rather than replicating passive, traditional learning environments (see Griffiths 2005).

An often cited summary characterising active learning (Bonwell and Eison, 1991) proposes that ‘strategies promoting active learning be defined as instructional activities involving students doing things and thinking about what they are doing’ (¶ 2). Bonwell and Eison comment that although research studies demonstrate that active learning is comparable to lectures in promoting content mastery, it develops superior thinking/ writing skills. Adding that ‘some cognitive research has shown that…individuals have learning styles best served by pedagogical techniques other than lecturing. Therefore, a thoughtful and scholarly approach to skilful teaching requires that faculty become knowledgeable about the many ways strategies promoting active learning have been successfully used across the disciplines’.

Resources
Evidence of capability in this practice is seen through course and programme designs that provide students with authentic and personally relevant contexts for their learning. E-learning technologies and pedagogies should be flexibly designed so as to allow incorporation of student experience and knowledge.

Chickering and Ehrmann (1996) update experiential learning to take account of assistive technologies, which they categorise into three areas, namely ‘tools and resources for learning by doing, timedelayed exchange, and real-time conversation’ (p. 4), all of which are being increasingly supported by the development of integrated, extended purpose software, or worldware (for example, CleverPHL (Schroeder and Spannagel, 2006)). They also update the earlier notions of apprentice-like participatory learning experiences by relating these to newer technology. The examples include activities that not only use technology, such as computing and statistical research, but also activities where technology can simulate environments that may be risky or inaccessible, or that can ‘visualise’ invisible effects such as electromagnetism.