Encouraging Interaction to Promote Learner Engagement in an Online Blended Learning Course Based on ZOOM, CNMOOC, and CANVAS

Abstract

This study investigates how to engage students in a blended academic writing course. We did classroom observation and analyzed the chatroom and video recordings of the class on ZOOM, the learning materials and procedure on CNMOOC, and the collaborative writing tasks submitted on CANVAS. We also analyzed data from WeChat and the interview. The results show that teacher-student, student-content, and student-student interactions can all influence students’ engagement. Teacher-student interaction in the form of questions and answers, presentations and comments, knowledge exploration using note-pen, and teacher’s written and oral feedback has effect on students’ engagement in ZOOM. Student content interaction via well-designed videos, exercises, and in-class activities influences their engagement on CNMOOC. Student-student interaction for completing project-based writing tasks and peer review in collaborative writing has an impact on students’ engagement after class. The study will have pedagogical implications for how to promote student engagement in an online blended learning context

1. Introduction

Student engagement has always been a topic receiving much attention in language teaching and learning. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, students cannot travel to campus or study in the classroom, making it more difficult for the teacher to engage students, especially to have students involved in the interactions with the teacher, the peers, and the learning contents. Blended learning, as a means of educational innovation and an approach to solving the problem, was encouraged and adopted in many Chinese universities in the post-pandemic era, but problems arise as to whether and how students can be engaged in this new online learning context.

Blended learning is normally defined as the combination of face-to-face instruction with computer-mediated instruction [1], and it has been extended to the online situation, which means “the integration of different online platforms to facilitate learning that can be achieved by blending online learning and offline face-to-face classroom instruction” ([2], p. 180). In blended learning, students are given video lectures online for learning autonomously before class, thereby creating opportunities of discussion for the internalization of knowledge in class. This process involves a lot of interactions with the knowledge contents and with teachers and peers. Researchers have included the idea of interaction in models of engagement [3], and the basic element for facilitating interaction is to encourage students to engage themselves and be responsible for their own learning [4]. While interaction can be more easily achieved in the off-line or face-to-face learning context, how can interaction in the online blended learning environment achieve the same or even better effect is worth exploring. This chapter examines how learners’ interaction can promote their engagement in a blended academic writing and presentation course. Our purpose is 1) to analyze the patterns of interactions undertaken in the blended learning context; 2) to understand the practice of collaborative interactions in teaching and learning; and 3) to gain insights to enhance course design and delivery where interactions are included for better learner engagement.

2. Literature review

2.1 Theoretical background

Learner engagement is commonly defined as a multifaceted construct that entails a learner’s intense attention and involvement in not only psychological but also social, academic, and other aspects [5, 6]. It is largely a reflection of personal experience interacting with external contexts, closely related to a learner’s inner qualities such as cognitive ability and motivation level, and social environments where he or she lives and learns [7]. Sociocultural theory, which accentuates knowledge being socially constructed rather than confined to an individual’s mental process in isolation [8], naturally forms a sensible framework to investigate interaction, which may correspondingly facilitate engagement in learning and promote learners’ second language development [9].

Originally proposed by Vygotsky [10] to summarize general features of human learning, sociocultural theory has been continually developed and widely applied in second language research [11]. Acquiring a second language, according to Lantolf and Thorne [12], mainly concerns meaning creation through intrapersonal and interpersonal interaction where humans may appropriate physical and symbolic tools to mediate their command of a target language and their relations to the outer world. With numerous digital devices invented in this technological era as physical tools, technology-assisted language learning can be approached from a sociocultural lens to see how a changed setting brought by web-based systems and mobile applications may induce mediation to the learning process. Ai and Lu [13] pointed out that the synergy between computer-mediated language learning and sociocultural theory was promising, in that the former may engender innovative learning contexts that require guidance and explanation from the latter and even invoke further theoretical upgrades.

Blended learning, a combination of online learning via digital platforms and traditional in-person classroom instructions, offers such a technology-mediated context worth in-depth sociocultural investigation [14]. After reviewing 20 studies on the design of blended learning, Boelens et al. [15] identified social interaction as one of the four key issues in devising blended courses, given that maintaining interaction can be much more challenging in online activities compared with face-to-face meetings. It is argued by Stein and Graham [16] that establishing personal connections early in offline classes and sustaining the connection with interactive tasks online can be crucial to blended learning. The practical needs for interaction in blended learning can find their rationale from sociocultural theory, which posits that it is social, usually communicative, interaction that contributes fundamentally to a learner’s mental development [8]. Vygotsky [10]’s zone of proximal development (ZPD) in sociocultural theory refers exactly to a learner’s performance that cannot be achieved independently but may be accomplished after the learner interacts with others, often teachers and peers, in a certain environment. Specifically, in a blended learning context, technological elements are added and learning modes are enriched, making the interaction not confined to humans and humans but extended to humans and digital tools. Sociocultural theory may help to reveal dynamic interrelations among teachers, students, learning tasks, and tools, and thus rejuvenate its theoretical implications in response to technological advancements.

2.2 Learner engagement in blended learning

Despite no consensus regarding the number and scope of engagement dimensions, the continuous effort has been made to capture and clarify the key dimensions [17, 18, 19]. Kahu [19] critically reviewed four mainstream research approaches to this multidimensional construct and proposed a conceptual framework for engagement in higher education, which centered on students’ affect, behavior, and cognition while acknowledging the influence of wider sociocultural and political backgrounds. Halverson and Graham [18], on the other hand, built an engagement framework particularly for blended learning where they considered cognitive and emotional engagement most relevant and inclusive. Since neither of the two frameworks has been well validated, this study does not directly take either one as the construct of engagement, but with reference to them, it adopts four dimensions: behavioral, cognitive, affective, and social. The first three dimensions are clearly defined in Fredricks et al. [17] and prevalent in engagement studies [20]. Behavioral engagement is described as observable conducts including learners’ attention, effort, persistence, and participation. Cognitive engagement involves the mental effort to understand, awareness, self-regulation, and use of strategies. Affective engagement encompasses feelings toward teachers, peers, and course contents, such as interests, anxiety, and boredom. The additional social engagement pertains to communicating with others in learning-related activities, which becomes noteworthy especially in the online environment as digital spaces lead to new social features for teachers to consider in course design [21].

Much research has been done in face-to-face and remote settings to show the effect of engagement on learning outcomes and factors that may moderate the impact [22, 23]. It turned out that distinct engagement dimensions may be interrelated and vary in their influence, and that both individual factors (e.g., language proficiency and self-efficacy) and contextual factors (e.g., task complexity and use of technology) may account for the variance [24, 25]. These findings may somehow be relevant to blended learning contexts but not completely applicable, because while a blended course typically concerns respective features of online and offline modes, specificity and complexity may emerge when two modes are combined to form a new one [26]. A comparison study on the effect of different learning modalities suggested that the overall student engagement with online Icelandic courses was higher in the blended mode than in the distance learning mode and the self-directed mode [27]. But the overall engagement in this study was largely behavioral, as the measure depended on course progress recorded by the online system, which was plain descriptive statistics mostly related to learners’ behaviors. Cornelius et al. [28] examined a group of undergraduates’ experience in a blended course with an MOOC component for tutorials and independent study, finding that these students were more engaged in social aspects but less engaged in cognitive aspects than the wider undergraduate cohort at the same university. These results point to blended learning as a context distinct from others with regard to learner engagement and call for inquiry into specified engagement dimensions in blended learning.

It is true that blended learning allows for greater flexibility and autonomy, but higher chances of distraction and interruption usually come together with a flexible and autonomous learning environment [29]. Learners, especially those with less confidence or lower proficiency level, may not devote their attention and mental effort in a blended course as much as they do in a traditional classroom [30]. Hence, only when thoughtful and cohesive designs are applied to blended learning to effectively merge synchronous and asynchronous contact can learners be fully engaged in a blended context, embracing better learning experiences, and even academic success [31]. Starting from the students’ perspective, Tuiloma et al. [32] conducted a large-scale survey to investigate the support that students perceived in their blended courses and existing barriers in the way to more engagement. Through acknowledging support from their teachers and universities, more than 30 percent of surveyed students reported at least three barriers preventing them from being engaged behaviorally, cognitively, or affectively. With a belief that learner engagement is malleable through pedagogy, Heilporn and his colleagues synthesized from extensive teacher interviews engagement strategies to foster students’ behavioral, cognitive, and affective engagement in blended courses of various disciplines [31, 33]. These strategies, many of which focusing on enhanced interaction, properly used technological tools, and well-designed guidance and assessments, were categorized into different types corresponding to engagement dimensions and course design aspects.

However, how those engagement strategies actually work in a certain authentic institutional context remains under-explored, since seldom have researchers detailed a particular blended learning design for engagement improvement. The latest exception is by Korkealehto et al. [30], who analyzed 22 business students’ engagement in a blended language course design with data from learning diaries and open-ended questionnaire responses. It was revealed that interactive assignments and authentic learning materials contributed greatly to students’ behavioral, affective, and cognitive engagement, whereas collaboration and self-regulated practices boosted social engagement. As this course mainly focused on the oral development of business English, it may be interesting to examine the blended learning design of a language course with other objectives.

2.3 Connecting interaction with engagement

Among the aforementioned engagement strategies and support, increased interaction is frequently mentioned by teachers, students, and researchers in online learning [32, 33, 34]. This is probably due to the issue of “transactional distance,” a psychological distance that may lead to students’ misunderstanding of their teachers and that may extend with a lengthened physical distance in online contexts [35], p. 23. Without effective interactive designs that inspire communication across the “transactional distance,” misunderstanding may accumulate in distance learning, blended learning, and flipped classrooms to the extent where learners no longer believe in their teachers, lose interest in course contents, and experience negative feelings of anxiety, helplessness, and isolation [36]. Hence, interaction can be closely associated with engagement in online learning. Stein and Graham [16] adopted the classification of learning interaction into three subcategories by Moore [37]: student-content, teacher-student, student-student, and revealed their respective strengths and limitations to give guidance for maximizing engagement in blended learning. The following part reviews the literature on the connections between the three interactions with specific engagement dimensions.

2.3.1 Teacher-student interaction

Teacher-student interaction typically occurs when a teacher interacts with a group of students in real or virtual classrooms and when a teacher communicates with a student outside classrooms by email or social media [16]. Regarded as the most important interaction type among the three, teacher-student interaction can greatly influence students’ engagement in learning as well as final performance [38]. Teachers may provide direct support after immediate contact with students who encounter content or technical problems, so that they could avoid too much anxiety that possibly results in low engagement [36]. Under emergent circumstances such as the lockdown during COVID-19, social presence of teachers and students can be critical to keeping students socially and affectively engaged in online courses, and teachers should stay connected and take the initiative to sustain a stable online learning community especially during the crisis [39]. Teachers can also render scaffolding conducive to learner engagement out of class by communicating with students via social media. For example, Tong et al. [40] examined how 110 university students from a class of Chinese as a foreign language engaged in authentic and semi-formal conversations in the class WeChat group. The online communication was initially led by the teacher but then gradually by students themselves as they grow more interested and confident. It is mindful rather than merely frequent teacher-student interaction that may facilitate learner engagement.

2.3.2 Student-content interaction

Student-content interaction involves reading, understanding, or responding to learning materials from textbooks, videos, software, and any other available sources [41]. Goh et al. [42] unveiled the relationships among student-content interaction, behavioral engagement, and learning outcomes with an intervention study of 45 Malaysian students participating in online peer review activities for a research writing project. The result that students who spent more effort on peer review, and constantly reviewed course materials tended to submit better final writing indicates that interaction with contents can mediate the effect of behavioral engagement on final learning outcomes. Whereas traditional content is static and limited in adapting to learners’ levels, digital content is dynamic and encourages active learning through suitable tasks based on learners’ needs [16]. Bikowski and Casal [43] found that the introduction of digital interactive textbooks inspired effective strategy use of 13 non-native English-speaking university students during the learning process in an ESP course, demonstrating how content interaction may improve behavioral and cognitive engagement. Technology affords “hypertextual, multimodal, and communicative platforms” for presenting knowledge and opens the possibility for student-content interaction in blended learning [43].

2.3.3 Student: Student interaction

Students may interact with peers formally in class discussions, collaborative writing and other group work for a course, or informally in study groups out of class [16]. This interaction type has been repeatedly highlighted in educational research, because good learning is, in many situations, not isolated or competitive but collaborative and social [34]. Even though social interaction among peers may be impeded in online learning contexts because of psychological or physical distances between students, technology offers numerous solutions realized through digital tools which, if integrated well into learning activities, may trigger effective communication between students. Kim and Kim [44] designed a wiki-enhanced blended writing course where 56 high-school participants utilized a wiki platform to complete writing assignments and conducted peer review activities. Results showed that wiki-based peer discussion helped create a sharing community where those students felt motivated to exchange ideas and revise their own drafts. Lyu and Lai [45] looked into the interaction initiated by 11 L2 learners with native speakers of their target languages on Lang-8, a language learning social media. When these learners posted their blog-like L2 writing on the platform and received feedback from native speakers who were Lang-8 users learning other languages, they felt supported in social and emotional aspects in addition to language and acquired a sense of community belonging that encouraged persistent involvement in language learning on this platform.

The three subcategories of interaction, albeit with different emphases, are connected, as they all revolve around “students” in a learning environment. Existing evidence has somehow proved a certain association between interaction and engagement, but failed to reveal a complete and dynamic picture since most previous research just focused on one or two subcategories of interaction. The assistance of digital tools has brought ever-increasing opportunities of interaction, which may further bring along the improvement of learner engagement in blended learning settings. Nevertheless, mere increased interaction may not be sufficient. Only when meaningful interaction in the learning context is increased can learners become actively engaged in the learning events and create knowledge through “transformation of experience” ([46], p. 205). To our best knowledge, no research has touched upon a thorough examination of interaction and engagement in blended learning.

Therefore, in order to address the gaps identified from the literature, this study is proposed to make an in-depth exploration of interaction patterns in light of engagement in a blended learning course based on ZOOM and CNMOOC. The research questions are raised as follows: 1) What are the patterns of interactions undertaken in the blended academic writing and presentation course? 2) How can different patterns of interactions promote learner engagement in the course?

3. Method

3.1 Participants

Participants in the research were 21 undergraduates enrolled in Academic Writing and Presentation course in Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China. Among them, 9 were international students while 12 were Chinese students. They attended the 90-minute class via ZOOM once every week for 16 weeks. Since it was a blended course, students were supposed to do autonomous learning via CNMOOC before class, participate in activities via ZOOM, and complete project-based writing prompted by assignments on Canvas, a platform designed by the university for the management of learning modules, the arrangement of course materials, and the assignment of learning tasks. They also employed WeChat, an APP frequently used in China for synchronous and asynchronous communications after class.

3.2 Instruments

We did classroom observation by video-recoding the ZOOM class and downloaded the data from the ZOOM chatroom. We also followed the learning procedure records on CNMOOC, including watching videos, doing exercises, and posting ideas. Besides, assignments were saved from CANVAS all along the process of writing, such as reading research papers, planning and revising the outline, and writing and revising the research paper. At the end of the course, we interviewed an international and a local student from two different groups to investigate more details about how students engaged themselves in learning. Some of the students’ interactions in WeChat were also used as further evidence to show group members’ engagement through interaction in cooperative learning.

3.3 Procedure of data collection and analysis

We transcribed the ZOOM video recordings into texts, together with the texts in the chatroom to analyze teacher-student interaction. We also analyzed data from the teacher’s written feedback, followed by the oral feedback in the form of discussions with each group via ZOOM microphone. The records of student learning, such as textbook study, note-taking for research paper reading, and autonomous learning on CNMOOC, were analyzed for investigating engagement in student-content interaction. Peer-review comments and students’ communication in WeChat for jointly completing the project were analyzed for student-student interaction. Interview data were used to further support ideas about students’ interactions and engagement in the course.

4. Results

4.1 Teacher-student interaction

Teacher-student interaction in ZOOM is mainly demonstrated in the form of questions and answers, exploration using ZOOM note-pen, student presentations and teacher comments, and teacher’s written and oral feedback about students’ writings.

4.1.1 Questions and answers by using ZOOM chatroom and microphone

Example 1

Some astonishing questions about the nature of the universe have been raised by scientists studying black holes in space. _______________________________________. So much matter compressed into so little volume changes the fabric of space around it in puzzling ways.

1. The collapse of a dead star into a point perhaps no larger than a marble creates a black hole.

2. A black hole is created by the collapse of a dead star into a point perhaps no larger than a marble.

Excerpt.

1. T: Which sentence do you think is better to be filled in the blank?

   1. S1: 2.

   2. S2: 2.

   3. S3: 2.

   4. S4: 2.

   5. S5: 2.

   6. S6: 2.

2. T: OK, most of you think it’s No. 2. Why do you feel No 2 is better? What’s the difference between these two?

3. S7: Passive voice.

4. S8 (Microphone): The first one is formal and the second one is informal.

5. T: Do you mean the second sentence is less formal. But usually, a passive voice is more formal than an active voice.

6. S5: The term comes first, followed by the definition, easy to understand what the sentence is intended for.

7. S7: Important thing is placed first in the sentence.

8. T: You are closer. Very good! Can you recall what you have watched in CNMOOC?

9. S7: Oh, old and new information principle.

10. T: Good, can you give some explanation?

11. S7: (Microphone) The second sentence start from “black holes,” which has been mentioned at the end of the 1st sentence. Old information first and new information second is easier to understand.

12. T: Excellent! In summary, begin sentences with information that are familiar to your readers. End sentences with information that readers cannot anticipate.

Example 1 is to show how students and the teacher interact in the form of questions and answers to perform class activities by using chatroom, microphone, or both in ZOOM. In Example 1, students tried to find the connection between the sentences in a paragraph for enhancing logic and flow. We can see from the example that students actively contributed their ideas in the ZOOM chatroom, or used the microphone to make their voices heard. The teacher did not give the answers quickly, instead, she waited patiently and encouraged students to give more opinions. As a result, they not only made a correct judgment but also struggled to figure out the reason why the second sentence was better. Through interactions in ZOOM, students were able to have a thorough and deep exploration of the knowledge about academic writing. Finally, one student recalled the knowledge learnt from CNMOOC and gave the correct answer. This process of teacher-student interaction demonstrates deep engagement of learning by means of questioning and answering in ZOOM.

4.1.2 Knowledge exploration by using ZOOM note-pen

Figures 1–4 demonstrate how students used the note-pen to interact with the teacher. In Figure 1, students were asked to underline the key information for the summary of a given text. In Figure 2, students were required to find out the informal expressions and turn them into more academic ones. Figure 3 shows how students revised an outline that had problems concerning parallelism, ordination, subordination, and division. In Figure 4, students explored the five essentials of an abstract and tried to improve the abstract. To be more specific, they were supposed to learn the basic contents by themselves via videos and exercises on CNMOOC. When they participated in class activities in ZOOM, they used the knowledge they had learnt to analyze the essentials involved in the abstract taken from a published research paper. To encourage more engagement from the students, the teacher asked them to use the note-pen in ZOOM to identify the different parts such as background, aim, method, result, and conclusion. They were also required to figure out how to improve the abstract by making some modifications in the form of deletion, addition, or rewriting. Students jointly marked the different parts of the abstract by using the note-pen. They also found that the background was too long and one student deleted it by crossing out those sentences. When the teacher asked whether the background could be simplified, they started to think hard and finally wrote down their suggestions for improvement in the chatroom.

Figure 1.

Summary task using note-pen.

Figure 2.

Academic style task using note-pen.

Figure 3.

Outline task using note-pen.

Figure 4.

Abstract task using note-pen.

4.1.3 Student presentation and teacher comment

Students were supposed to give a 3-minute presentation on the topic they chose, the research papers they had read, and the outline they designed for their own research. Students gave the presentation in ZOOM and comments were given immediately after their presentations. In order to save time and improve efficiency, students were asked to record their presentations and sent the videos to Canvas so that the teacher could watch these videos in advance and choose typical examples to give comments in class. They were also required to submit the outline in written form to CANVAS for the teacher to give written comments.

Example 2 demonstrates students’ draft outline for collaborative writing and the teachers’ comments (Figure 5). The students submitted the outline in PPT format and the teacher gave intensive written feedback to show what need improving by using the “note” function in PPT. She also demonstrated the video to the whole class when they met in ZOOM and gave oral comments while playing the video so that students could learn from others and possibly avoid similar problems in their own outline. The excerpt that follows is part of the interaction between the teacher and students while the teacher gave oral comments in ZOOM.

Figure 5.

Students’ draft outline (part) with teacher comments.

Example 2

Excerpt.

1. T: … Can you find any problems in the literature review part?

2. S1: I do not know quite well about literature review.

3. T: Literature review is about the review of previous studies in the research area …... In this part, you should have some thematic perspective…...

4. S1: Maybe I need to read more so that I can try to add something new to this part.

5. T: And what is “3.2 Methodology,” is this included in the literature review?

6. S2: This is the method of past research.

7. T: Oh, you do not put “methodology” to refer to past research, or it will be very confusing because others will think this is your own research method.

8. S2: I will delete it and reorganize according to the topics.

9. T: Mm… And why do you put “3.3 our findings” in literature review? It should be a separate part “Results.”

10. S2: Mm, there are problems with the structure.

11. ……

After the written and oral feedback, students had a better understanding of what problems they had in the outline and felt confident in revising the outline. They resubmitted their outline to Canvas, which demonstrated much improvement. On the basis of the outline, students were able to develop ideas in detail and write a logical research paper. In short, the interactions in the form of student presentations and teacher comments facilitate students’ engagement, resulting in better performance in learning.

4.1.4 Teacher’s written and oral feedback to student writings

After students submitted their drafts, the teacher gave feedback in written form. In order to achieve a better understanding of the feedback, students in their collaborative groups had discussions with the teacher in turn via ZOOM microphone. Example 3 is written feedback on the draft abstract (Figure 6), followed by the oral discussion between the teacher and the students in ZOOM, and a revised abstract showing the improvement resulting from the written and oral feedback. This example demonstrates how the teacher gave written and oral feedback to the draft, how the teacher and students interact to reach a better understanding of the comments, and how the abstract was revised. The whole process can demonstrate the engagement of students and improvement of performance.

Figure 6.

Original abstract with teacher’s written feedback.

Example 3

Excerpt.

1. T: Now, look at the abstract. It’s very short.

2. S1: Yes, it’s too short. I think we will put some more contents like the conclusion we made and what we will find in our study.

3. S2: We have used another person’s research in our abstract, so I think we might need to cite the resource?

4. T: Usually in the abstract, you will give a very general and brief introduction of the background, and emphasize on the things you have done, such as the method, result and conclusion. The background is general, you seldom use citations. Have you seen citations in an abstract when you read other research papers?

5. S2: I see some in the discussion and introduction part. So professor’s idea is to put this sentence in the introduction or literature review, is that right?

6. T: Yes.

Revised abstract

Intergenerational mobility of education can be seen as one dimension of educational fairness. In this chapter, we applied multiple linear regressions to study the relationship between Intergenerational mobility of education and area, policy, and family education background with 11,000+ data collected from China Family Panel Studies (CFPS). We found a possible “ceiling,” which is the approximate bachelor and master degree, for the education level of children. Also, policy generally increases the education level while hurting mobility. Children living in urban areas are likely to receive better education and surpass their parents while there is no significant difference in mobility between urban and rural areas. Male offspring are more likely to attain a higher degree and less likely to be influenced by their family’s education background.

In the revised abstract, students solved all the problems that occurred in the original paper. The new abstract demonstrates the essential elements required by an abstract. Compared with the draft, the method and results of the research are specified and the conclusion is given.

4.1.5 WeChat interactions

We established a WeChat group for the teachers and students to have frequent interactions both synchronously and asynchronously. There are altogether 172 messages from the teacher and 122 messages from the students. Figure 7 contains three clips from the WeChat group to show how the teacher and the students interact. The teacher would engage students by setting the steps of learning, informing students of newly assigned tasks, specifying requirements of certain tasks, sending useful learning materials, reminding students of the deadlines, and answering students’ questions. The students would be motivated by the teacher and engaged in learning. They would state some management problems whenever they need support, raise questions about learning to ask the teacher for help, and share interesting materials they have found with other students.

Figure 7.

WeChat group interactions.

4.2 Student-content interaction

Student-content interaction is manifested by students’ interaction with the teaching materials such as textbook learning, research paper reading and note-taking, video-watching, and exercise completion on CNMOOC.

4.2.1 Textbook learning, research paper reading, and notetaking

The textbook entitled “Academic Writing and Presentation” is designed by the instructor for the course. This book covers contents about academic ethics, topic choice, literature reading, language improvement, academic writing essentials, and presentation strategies. It features the blended-learning model, with directions for before-class autonomous learning of MOOC, in-class activities with implementation instructions, and after-class tasks for completing the research project. Students frequently referred to the textbook, either for previewing the lessons before class or for reviewing the lessons after class. They also referred to specific contents if they were not sure about certain knowledge in the course, such as how to do a literature review, how to give peer-review comments, and how to provide citations and references. As one student said in the interview: “The textbook is just like a handbook that I can refer to whenever I have questions about learning.” In fact, students frequently had interactions with the course textbook, which shows their engagement in learning.

Since students had the freedom of choosing their own topic of interest for research, the papers they read were different except for some sample papers the teacher used in the instruction. The members of a group searched and shared the papers for the group research, they had interactions with the contents in the published papers while reading and making notes (Figure 8). They were also required to give presentations about their reading and write the research background on the basis of reading. As a result, students were highly engaged in the reading process.

Figure 8.

Research paper reading with notes.

4.2.2 Video-watching and exercise completion on CNMOOC

Table 1 shows the online learning materials and students’ learning records on CNMOOC. It is shown that there were many contents for students to do autonomous learning on CNMOOC and that students had asynchronous interactions by posting on the discussion board. Figure 9 shows students’ learning track on CNMOOC, such as the length of time they spent on learning, the progress of task completion, and the percentage of video watching and exercise completion. The online records help the teacher know how students were engaged in learning all through the semester, enabling her to give formative assessments of learning and adjustment of teaching whenever necessary.

Items	Number or time length
Number of videos	33
Total length of videos (minutes)	227
Number of files	18
Announcements	1
Number of tests	12
Number of exercises	70
Student posting	62
Teacher posting	16

Table 1.

Learning materials and learning process records on CNMOOC.

Figure 9.

Student learning track on CNMOOC.

One thing to be notified of is that the exercises must be well-designed. That means the exercise should have some degree of difficulty so that students are most likely to have more interactions with the contents and be more engaged in CNMOOC. They also have to be more attentive when they come to the class so that they are able to know how to do the exercises correctly. For example, there was a paraphrase exercise, in which students were asked to read the following sentence and identify the best paraphrase.

Example 4

The amphibia, which is the animal class to which our frogs and toads belong, were the first animals to crawl from the sea and inhabit the earth.

1. The first animals to leave the sea and live on dry land were the amphibia, such as frogs and toads.

2. Frogs and toads belong to the animal class amphibia.

3. The amphibia, the animal class to which frogs and toads belong, were the first animals that move from the sea to the earth.

4. Frogs and toads are the amphibia that come from sea to earth.

Excerpt.

1. T: Which one do you think is the appropriate paraphrase of the original sentence?

2. S1 (Microphone): It’s C?

3. S2: A.

4. S3: C.

5. S4: C.

6. S5: C.

7. S6: A.

8. S7: A.

9. S8: (Microphone) I think it’s A.

10. T: You think it’s A. there are two different ideas now.

11. S8: (Microphone) I think A is better.

12. T: According to the meaning, both are correct. But a paraphrase should not be too similar to the original sentence structure or the use of words, so A is better.

The result shows that students had disagreements about whether to choose A or C because both seem to be the possible answers. The conflict of ideas might arouse more attention from the learners to the teacher’s explanation that a paraphrase was not only close in meaning but also different in form from the original sentence. We can see from the example that well-designed in-class activities can promote pre-class learning and generate numerous ideas from the students in ZOOM activities. In other words, the well-designed videos and exercises on CNMOOC and the corresponding activities in ZOOM can promote learner engagement in that students have to be devoted to learning before class in order to be equipped with the knowledge to participate in the discussions in class.

4.3 Student-student interaction

Student-student interaction includes three forms: WeChat interaction for finishing collaborative project-based tasks, peer review in writing, and the question and answer session in the final presentation of their research papers.

4.3.1 Collaborative work in project-based tasks

For completing their collaborative research project, students had a lot of interactions after class via WeChat. The interaction occurred throughout the process, starting from choosing a research topic, allocation of tasks and responsibilities, and to jointly finishing and improving their writing. The following is an expert from two students when they tried to choose their research topic. Example 5 is an excerpt from the WeChat discussion between two students.

Example 5.

1. S1: hahaha ∼ maybe l’m talking too much, but I’m also thinking that for analyzing why Chinese and Russian students think differently in your part, maybe I could give you some ideas about how Chinese students think?

2. S2: I think too. I love your enthusiasm, it will be cool! Also our university is starting the vegan meals in Cafe on campus, maybe it will be useful info for our work?

3. S1: Actually I do not know much about vegan meals, but l think yes it may have an influence on people’s attitude of eco-friendly food.

The two students from China and Russia collaboratively worked on the project. They were both enthusiastic about the project and were discussing what topic to choose. The Russian student proposed vegan meals and the Chinese student responded with eco-friendly food. Then, the Chinese student suggested doing a comparative study to see how Russian and Chinese students’ opinions differed concerning eco-friendly food. They found the comparison would be interesting and immediately reached an agreement. Later, as one of the students in the interview mentioned: “We frequently interact with each other via WeChat when we need to, such as sharing information about our sources, allocation our tasks and assignments, collecting data from both sides.” Since they were quite motivated at the very beginning of the project, they were more willing to interact with each other and continued with a lot of engagement, as a result, they completed the task quite well.

4.3.2 Peer review in collaborative writing

Example

Students were trained on how to do peer review before giving peer review to each other, they were also provided with a peer review checklist to ensure that they had paid attention to all the important issues in writing. If they disagreed with their peers’ comments, they were supposed to discuss them together until they reached an agreement for revision. Example 6 is part of a peer review work taken from the Chinese student who jointly worked with the Russian student on the topic of how ecological advertisement influences the purchase of green food (Figure 10). The student gave very intensive comments, either by direct addition or deletion, which is shown by the revision track on the left column or by noting, as is shown in the right column. The student who received the comments would read, think, and make judgment about how to revise. They would also talk to each other if they had disagreements. As the student mentioned in the interview: “We may not totally agree with each other’s suggestions. On this occasion, we will discuss via WeChat.” In fact, peer review is a task that can engage students well because this is not only an assignment to be scored, but also a process involving a lot of reading, thinking, and writing. Students read their peers’ writings so that the whole paper can be more systematic in structure, richer in content, and more fluent in language.

Figure 10.

Peer review sample.

4.3.3 Q & A session in research presentation

Example 7

1. S1: I’m Kathy from Group 7. I’d like to ask questions about the solution part. You have mentioned that there are a lot of problems about the economic and political aspects, like low labor participation rate and little property right for female. I just ask why in your solution part, only education is mentioned? Why there are not solutions regarding economy and politics? Are there any other solutions?

2. S2: Thank you Kathy for your question. In terms of whether there are possible solutions other than education, the answer is definitely “yes”…... As for why we choose education as the solution, we saw that education …… could possibly solve a number of problems. In terms of the cultural practices, in the long run, teachers and educators being the most important role players, they will be able to help solve and change the mind of our youth…… In terms of why we chose educations specifically, it was the most practical to implement, we could see the benefits both in the short and long term. I hope that can answer your questions.

Example 7 is the question from the audience and the answer by one of the speakers who jointly gave a presentation on the topic of gender discrimination. Students were supposed to present the parts of their responsibility in the research paper. The presentation was followed by the Q&A section, in which each speaker was required to answer at least one question from the audience. In order to attract the audience’s attention to the presentation and encourage them to raise questions, anyone who asked a question would be given 1 additional point to their final score for the presentation. We also invited students to be evaluators of other students’ performance so that they could be more engaged by listening attentively to give reasonable scores.

5. Discussion

5.1 Teacher-student interaction

Our study shows that students engaged themselves in learning through teacher-student interaction in ZOOM. The Excerpts about questions and answers for the exploration of certain knowledge and the marking for specific information using a note-pen demonstrate that students were actively engaged in the interaction. It is also found that the WeChat group is a useful platform to ensure teacher-student interaction after class for encouraging students’ engagement in learning. The finding is in line with Tong et al. [40] who found that the use of the WeChat group can facilitate learner engagement, especially when the interaction is mindful rather than merely frequent. In both cases, the teacher played the important role of a mediator and involved the students by regulating the interaction. Vygotsky [10] assumes the importance of the presence of mediating agents (e.g., teachers) who guide learners through the process of understanding. From Vygotsky’s perspective, emotionality is a detrimental factor in achieving teacher-learner alignment in interaction [9]. Teachers as a mediator of learning should care for students’ emotions so that they can be more engaged, as Poehner and Swain [47] observed, mediation concerns the teacher’s responsibility of maintaining the learner’s interest and engagement in the interaction so that feelings of frustration can be minimized. Lee [48] emphasized that learners’ perceptions of how powerful teachers are able to organize the class and care for students might influence engagement. She reported that feelings of comfort or the teacher’s ability to create a comfortable context for learning influenced learners’ willingness to communicate and the quality of interaction. Therefore, the role of the teacher is not only to instruct about a specific concept but also to mediate learners’ behavior and engagement in the collaborative work and to understand the relationship between behavioral, emotional, and cognitive aspects of engagement [49].

As a matter of fact, whether students can be actively motivated and sufficiently engaged in a class is determined, to much extent, by how a teacher is engaged in teaching. In other words, a teacher has to be devoted to teaching and engaged in the course design and course implementation first, because teacher engagement is sometimes a determinant factor in students’ engagement. As Davin [9] put it: to engage learners, teachers should be engaged first by providing excellent classroom design and giving immediate, intensive, and useful feedback. Lidz [49] echoes the point by stating that for a teacher who strives to function as an optimal teacher, engaging in behaviors him/herself is definitive of excellence in teaching (p. 13).

5.2 Student-content interaction

Our study also shows that students engaged themselves by interacting frequently with the learning contents, such as their textbook, the self-selected resources for reading, and CNMOOC videos and exercises. The textbook and CNMOOC developed by the teacher, and the reading materials students have searched for their research topic provide abundant resources for learning and result in student-content interaction. Goh et al. [42] find that students who constantly review course materials tend to have better performance because their interaction with contents can mediate the effect of behavioral engagement on final learning outcomes. Kahn [50] maintains that the investment in learning resources contributes to the behavioral, cognitive, and emotional dimensions of engagement which are reflected by students’ active participation, full performance, and satisfactory learning products.

The materials designed for blended learning and the record of students’ learning process on CNMOOC demonstrate how computers can be applied to aid teaching and how students can be engaged in a blended learning context. Ziegler et al. [51] find that the online system can influence the learning outcome because it can provide feedback automatically, track learners’ actions and engagement with the system, and record the learning processes and progress as they complete certain tasks. Students also exerted much effort in autonomous learning and challenged the difficulties in the process. The finding is shared by Burch et al. [46] who find that students pay attention to the learning materials and maintain their engagement even if challenged by difficult learning activities. As some students mentioned in the interview: “I usually make use of CNMOC to do some preview and review of knowledge if I have difficulty in learning”; “Some CNMOOC exercises are difficult for me, but I’d like to try my best to solve these problems so that I can complete my project well.” From the interview, we can see that when encountering difficulties, students will try hard and regulate themselves to meet the challenges. As a matter of fact, students’ self-regulation, cognitive strategy use, effort, and persistence can all show their cognitive engagement [52].

Our findings also suggest that both exercises in CNMOOC and activities in ZOOM should be well-designed to encourage higher engagement from the learners. Johnson and Golombek [53] claim that teachers must understand the nature of the instructional activities in classrooms, trace the activity as it is unfolding, and know the extent to which engagement in such activities influences what students learn and how they learn. Teachers as facilitators of engagement with good learning experience design can increase the possibility of learner engagement [18]. When activities are designed well, the teacher becomes a guide rather than an authority, and students may be given more space and freedom, thus students participate in these activities by taking up new modes of engagement [54].

5.3 Students-student interaction

Our study also shows that students are engaged in their learning tasks through student-student interaction. They work collaboratively in project-based tasks, give peer review in collaborative writing, and ask and answer questions in research presentations. Students’ engagement can be enhanced through collaborative project-based writing, during which they interact frequently with each other and are highly engaged for completing these tasks and activities. Li and Zhu [55] claim that whether collaboration is fruitful or not depends on the way of collaboration such as the degree of control over the task, and the level of engagement among learners. If learners in a group are regarded as an intrinsically connected unity rather than independent entities [56], their engagement can be reinforced by the joint construction of meaning [57], joint attention [58], joint mediation [59], and metalinguistic processing of active participation [60]. They can be highly engaged because a collaborative activity is a synergetic process that can promote the emergence of zones of proximal development among learners [58].

We can also find students’ engagement in learning by observing the peer review on writing assignments. Students working in the same group gave comments on their two group members’ writings so that the whole piece can be systematic with better quality. As one student reflected in the interview: “I find that peer review is helpful because I had to think hard for giving appropriate feedback to my partners and I also received feedback from them as to how to improve the language, content and structure.” Yu and Lee [61] use activity theory to understand peer review and maintain that students are motivated to use complex ways and draw on multiple resources to support each other through the writing process. Besides behavioral engagement in peer review, students also engaged themselves emotionally and cognitively, as De Guerrero and Villamil [62] assert that revision involving peer-to-peer scaffolding entails encouragement and emotional support. Goh et al. [42] even maintain that learners may be engaged in metacognitive reflection during peer review, and active engagement in peer review improves learning outcomes. On the whole, understanding peer review as an activity system allows teachers to appreciate the social nature of group writing assignments and enables students to increase their opportunities to use English beyond individual capability [63].

It can be reflected by teacher-student, student-content, and student-student interactions that social environment plays an important role in learning and development, especially in our writing class where students collaboratively work to finish a writing project. Sociocultural theory emphasizes the importance of social context in writing development [64]. The teacher, learners, and content are coordinated so that students can learn successfully and collaboratively in a goal-directed activity [65]. Interaction is considered an important mechanism for promoting L2 development from both cognitive and sociocultural perspectives [58]. It is regarded as an environmental affordance for L2 learners to engage in communication by receiving input, producing output, and gaining feedback from teachers [66].

6. Conclusion

The study examines how the three forms of interaction facilitate learner engagement in an online blended course of academic writing and presentation. The results show that teacher-student, student-student, and student-content interactions can all influence students’ engagement in a blended learning environment. Teacher-student interaction in the form of questions and answers, student presentations and teacher comments, knowledge exploration using note-pen, and teacher’s written and oral feedback influences engagement in ZOOM. Teacher-content interaction via well-designed videos, exercises and in-class activities affects students’ engagement in CNMOOC. Student-student interaction for completing project-based writing tasks in WeChat, and peer review in collaborative writing has an impact on students’ engagement after class. The findings are discussed from the behavioral, emotional, cognitive, and social perspectives. The study enables a deeper understanding of the practice of collaborative learning in the online blended learning context. It may enrich the sociocultural theory by revealing the dynamic interrelations among teachers, learners, learning tasks, and tools, thus contributing to a wider understanding of the theory relating to the advancement of technology. It has pedagogical implications for course design and delivery where interactions are involved for better student engagement.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the Chinese Ministry of Education who support our Social Sciences Planning Project entitled “Exploring a blended learning model for academic English writing course incorporating values education” (No. 21YJA740051)

Thanks are also due to the Center for Teaching and Learning Development at Shanghai Jiao Tong University for our project entitled “Improving Teaching from the Perspective of Students” (No. CTLD23X0009).