Abstract
Undergraduate research engagement is critically important across disciplines. In education, however, pre-service teachers often report disengaging from research activities. To address this problem, we drew on the affordances of online learning: building and implementing a self-paced online program of multimodal resources called ResearchEd. We evaluated the program across three years. First, 120 students took part in a quantitative survey measuring research engagement. Those with program access were significantly more likely to enjoy research and consider postgraduate study. Next, 52 students compared the program to a traditional paper-based report-writing guide. The majority agreed that the program had improved their research understanding (90.4%) and confidence (84.7%). Finally, 15 students participated in a focus group interview; nominating the flexibility and self-directed nature of the program as key benefits. We concluded that the affordances of the online program enabled successful research scaffolding.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 629–649 |
Number of pages | 21 |
Journal | Australian Educational Researcher |
Volume | 47 |
Issue number | 4 |
Early online date | 10 Dec 2019 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Sep 2020 |
Keywords
- pre-service teachers
- research engagement
- research–teaching nexus
- sociocultural theory
- scaffolding
- online learning