Social co-configuration in online language learning

University students involved in online courses play an active role in adapting the tasks they are set and the environment(s) in which they work. They also make adjustments to their working relationships with other people in an effort to improve their learning and/or fit study demands into wider life...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Australasian Journal of Educational Technology 2020-01, Vol.36 (2), p.13-26
Main Authors: Sun, Susan Y. H, Goodyear, Peter
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
College Students
Computer Simulation
Cooperative Learning
Design
Designers
Educational Opportunities
Foreign Countries
Group activities
Higher education
Instructional Design
Interviews
Learning Activities
Management Systems
Mandarin Chinese
Online Courses
Online learning
Outcomes of Education
Second Language Instruction
Second Language Learning
Social Environment
Student Adjustment
Student Attitudes
Students
Teaching Methods
Undergraduate Students
Web based courses
Citations: Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:University students involved in online courses play an active role in adapting the tasks they are set and the environment(s) in which they work. They also make adjustments to their working relationships with other people in an effort to improve their learning and/or fit study demands into wider life. The term co-configuration refers to the ways in which students customise what has been designed for them. Co-configuration is important but often invisible to the teachers and designers responsible for the courses. In this study, we focused on students' co- configuration where it has a strong social character. We drew on concepts from realist evaluation and the activity-centred analysis and design framework to examine students' social co-configuration. Twenty-six online language learning students were interviewed. Two main areas of social co-configuration emerged. Firstly, students co-configured working methods and relationships, roles, and divisions of labour in order to tackle group tasks. Secondly, students purposefully wove learning activity into their wider social environment, creating a social fabric that further enhanced and enriched their learning opportunities. The findings provide insights into students' social co-configuration. We argue that this is important for educational designers who aim to understand the mechanisms that connect educational designs to learning outcomes. [Author abstract]
ISSN:1449-5554
1449-3098
1449-5554
DOI:10.14742/ajet.5102