An exploration of institutional and personal barriers to online academic engagement at a Brazilian university

Cinthia Bittencourt Spricigo; Bárbara Maria Camilotti; Charles R. Graham; Ruth Baptista

doi:10.5944/educxx1.36095

Authors

Cinthia Bittencourt Spricigo Pontifical Catholic University of Paraná, Brasil https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9086-7032
Bárbara Maria Camilotti Pontifical Catholic University of Paraná, Brasil https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6342-5327
Charles R. Graham Brigham Young University, Utah, EE. UU. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8598-2602
Ruth Baptista Brigham Young University, Utah, EE. UU. https://orcid.org/0009-0007-4477-308X

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5944/educxx1.36095

Keywords:

online learning, student engagement, facilitators and barriers to engagement, higher education

Abstract

The recent global pandemic has raised institutional awareness around the world concerning the importance of having high quality online learning options for students. Learner engagement is often correlated with quality outcomes such as student academic success and student satisfaction. Learner engagement is commonly thought of as having three important dimensions: affective engagement, behavioral engagement, and cognitive engagement (ACE framework). Engagement is also enabled or limited by facilitators/barriers. Three important categories of facilitators/barriers are learner characteristics, personal environment, and course environment. Elements in each of these three areas enable or are barriers to students fully engaging in a course. This research explored what the barriers are to students fully engaging in their online courses at a Brazilian university to determine which areas will be most productive for the university program administrators and designers to focus on increase student academic engagement. A survey was applied to students from the Brazilian university under graduation online programs. It included items related to engagement facilitators barriers in the three areas described in the ACE framework and received 429 valid responses. The affective and behavioral dimensions were perceived by students as the lower engagement indicators in the ACE framework. Among facilitators or barriers for engagement, the ones under the course environment category were predominantly perceived as barriers, while learner characteristics and student environment were perceived as facilitators. However, all three categories were more barrier than facilitator for over 40% of the students. Although course environment is the barrier most under control of the institutions, understanding students´ personal environment and characteristics of learning can help them to provide support and facilitate full engagement in online courses.

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