Enrolled or engaged? tudents’ perceptions of engagement and oral interaction in a blended learning language course

Abstract

Student engagement is essential in online language courses where the risk of suspending studies is higher than in face-to-face teaching. Furthermore, oral language rehearsal is challenging in such a course; therefore providing sufficient assignments to rehearse oral interaction is central. This study investigates how student engagement and oral language skills rehearsal are perceived in a blended learning language course. The course design was based on multimodality and the applied theoretical frameworks were ecological language learning and the notion of engagement. The study was conducted, and the data were collected in a 5-credit course for 1st-year business administration students (n=22). The qualitative data include students’ learning diaries and open-ended questions of a post-course online questionnaire; the data were analysed according to the qualitative content analysis method. The findings suggest that meaningful course design with authentic assignments and course material enhanced students’ academic engagement; students’ own activity was perceived to foster academic engagement equally. ocial engagement was reinforced mainly by successful collaboration, but students’ own actions had a great impact as well. n terms of oral interaction, collaborative, meaningful assignments and student’s own investment in practicing had a positive impact on students’ oral interaction. This study contributes to earlier research since it provides an insight into student academic and social engagement in a blended learning context and 2Korkealehto, Lakkala & Toom: Engagement and oral interaction in blended learning The JALT CALL Journal vol. 17 no.1 the findings can guide educators to design more engaging language learning courses in higher education.