LECTURE VS WEBINAR: ENGAGEMENT AND DISTRACTION IN DISTANCE LEARNING ADULT TEACHERS

摘要

The movement for openness of learning content and courseware is pushing a change of paradigm and a need for new approaches in using ICT for smart environment. A new thread of investigations recently emerged regarding quality and efficiency of MOOCs: they were born with a promise of democratization and of teaching quality improvement and now provide us with information on huge numbers of subjects and on courses repeated several times, thus granting strong external validity to the performed studies. Moreover, the line of research dealing with study motivation is also reviving, in considering motivation and volition in distance learners and also in exploring causes and consequences of nowadays study environments, in which students make use, with multiple goals, of their own electronic device (BYOD - Bring Your Own Device). Here we propose an investigation on data collected in the past academic year within a blended course for adult students aimed at a post-graduate training, who were prevalently, and simultaneously, full-time engaged as high school teachers. The reflections we suggest are based on the analysis of the answers provided by the students to a questionnaire for the final evaluation of the course. We shall devote attention to the problem of the complex interplay among engagement, motivation and study context. Research on BYOD, on multitasking and on volition displays a framework of problems of attention which may affect blended students. One in particular is concerned with the problem of interference due to the multi-purpose use of the available devices and the consequence of being always connected and available. Our investigation is aimed at describing the context of elaboration and study of students dealing with various kinds of learning materials, which enabled, or not, interaction (webinars, classroom lectures) and control on the pace of the presentations (the recorded resources). Our expectation was that interactive tools should alleviate the isolation and distance feelings reported by studies on MOOCs. Interactivity may increase engagement and retention of attention on the material and on the lesson. The material under the students' control might have diminished the elaboration difficulties linked the difficulties of concentrating on a single task in a multitasking environment. The data collected concern the effectiveness of the resources as perceived by the students. We investigated their initial motivation, their study habits and preferences, how these fitted with different study resources and difficulties experienced because of internal and external sources of distraction during attendance and study.