Striving for Success: Exploring Participation, Feedback and achievement within Sunderland Online Undergraduate Nursing Students

Tracey Aytoun

Keywords: asynchronous discussion forums, feedback, formative assignment, summative assignment, academic attainment, Community of Inquiry, Salmon’s five-stage model

During COVID-19, the University of Sunderland formed Sunderland Online which delivers online programmes across various faculties enabling degrees to be studied globally with internet availability. Within this setting, asynchronous discussion forums replace the traditional face-to-face student and teacher interactions available in on-campus classrooms. These foster learning opportunities offering collaborative scenarios, knowledge construction and transfer alongside developing academic writing, critical thinking and analysis skills. All communication occurs through the medium of computer devices and facilitated by an online instructor.

The scholarship data is representative of a third-year top-up BSc nursing module. Students’ profiles highlight that the majority of students have English as an additional language. Many students have relocated from abroad to the United Kingdom with others considering this possibility. Achieving their Top-up BSc degree allows these students to attain their Nursing and Midwifery Council pin which permits them to work in the United Kingdom as a nurse and is vital for continuing professional development opportunities.

Student engagement in one nursing module discussion forum, reading of feedback, formative and summative assignment grades will be examined. The main aim of study is to identify factors that encourage or discourage student participation in the discussion forums, why students read or refrain from reading feedback, whether students submit formative and summative assignments and if there is a correlation between participation in these activities and student’s final grade.

The research will use a mixed-method explanatory sequential approach exploring a small-scale study.  Primary data will be collected using three methods.

Firstly, quantitative data will gather student data tracking via the learning management system, Canvas consisting of (n=70) students. Tracking of student’s participation in the module will highlight students that participated in the discussion forums, read instructor feedback and submitted formative and summative assignments.

Secondly, qualitative data will be collected via anonymous student questionnaires using Qualtrics. The questionnaires will include Likert-style and open-ended questions and analysis will occur on student responded questionnaires. Questionnaires will provide students perspectives about participation.

Thirdly, online instructors will participate in semi-structured online interviews involving set questions. These interviews will offer rich insights into nuanced data and help to inform the research.

Collectively, these approaches will support a thorough understanding of the scholarship with the possibility of recommendations for improving discussion forums, formative assignment participation, reading and utilising instructor feedback aiding in improved academic attainment in the module’s summative assignments.

Although the data has been collected, analysis is still to follow. Therefore, no preliminary observations have been identified. Within the completed dissertation a comprehensive analysis will be presented. The analysis will include statistical tests from the data tracking and questionnaires and thematic coding specifically from the questionnaires and interviews. The study seeks that the research questions will be addressed by the data analysis and potential insights will be revealed, providing expected and unexpected outcomes.

From the literature review the pedagogy of the Community of Inquiry framework (Garrison, Anderson and Archer, 2010) highlighting the interactions that take place between the social, cognitive and teaching presence and Salmon’s five-stage model (Salmon, 2011) were revealed. These pedagogies guide the design of the learning environment and will be applied to the analysis.

Looking ahead, from the specific findings of the data, although the scholarship was confined to a nursing module, recommendations for the future for Sunderland Online instructor practices may be improved by collaborative opportunities in cross-disciplinary faculties. Offering transferable skills to provide heightened meaningful students engagement in asynchronous discussion forums and attainment in online modules.