Promoting engagement in online learning beyond COVID-19: Possible strategies and directions for future research

Abstract

In the aftermath of the global pandemic, online learning is now ubiquitous around the world. Yet, although online learning has become a common learning approach across the globe, it is still viewed as a weaker option than on-campus face-to-face learning. Specifically, the lack of student engagement in online learning poses a persistent problem to many educators. In this article, we describe three key challenges of fully online learning: students being more easily distracted, students lacking self-regulation skills and students feeling isolated. Next, we present three possible strategies to address these challenges: promoting active learning through the online flipped classroom model, promoting self-regulation skills and reducing the sense of isolation through the use of chatbots. For each of the three strategies, we provide a description with relevant empirical studies based on our own work as well as previous work in the literature and discuss possible directions for further research.