Using Five-Way Interaction Spaces In An Online Distance Learning To Promote Engagement, Challenge And Progress Among K-12 Students

Abstract

The confounding impact of COVID-19 on education are not only extended on the school preparedness for the delivery of the new normal but rather on student achievement as well. Though there are some researches in the past decades that show positive impact of online distance learning on secondary students (Liu and Cavanaugh, 2012), its impact in the current times has to be revisited and validated including mechanism of delivery that promised good results. This has challenged school leaders to seek ways in innovating the online spaces (Li and Lalani, 2020; Erfurth and Ridge, 2020) to ensure a successful online distance learning delivery. Following the structures of the Education Action Research design, the study intends to describe the influence of the use of 5E (Bybee, 2006) and the 4 categories of interactions (Bounik and Marcus, 2006), as interaction mechanisms in online spaces. The researcher along with the school leaders went through the iterative process of PDSA to ensure the impact of the intervention (Miller, Prudente, Aguja, 2017). Three main variables were used to understand the outcome namely student engagement (Martin and Bolliger, 2018), student challenge, and students' progress. This studyrevealed that engagement and challenge increased with consistent implementation of the interaction opportunity in the lesson. This encouraged students to attend classes, be more satisfied, and consequently complete tasks against the school curricular benchmarks. The study has implications in the delivery of online distance learning, which on the course of the current pandemic situation will persist as a silver lining foresight of a better normal in the education.