<p> Online learning offers a convenient and popular choice for those needing courses to accommodate busy schedules. These include busy professionals, students with limited or no access to physical training facilities, businesses with diverse and global workforces, and students studying on campus. Online learning has experienced steady growth in both the academia and business worlds in recent years. Despite this steady adoption rate, however, there is a gap in the literature for empirical research to determine common factors of successful online courses. The Framework for Interaction and Cognitive Engagement in Connectivist Learning Contexts (FICECLC) Theory, a modern online-learning theoretical framework, states that the purpose of an online course is to transfer knowledge to the learner via his/her interaction with other learners, the course, and the instructor. This mixed-method study investigated online student course success with respect to student interaction by validating the FICECLC Theory framework by examining the correlation between student social interactions and progress for an online course built on the basis of the FICECLC Theory and an online course not built on the basis of the FICECLC Theory. Descriptive statistics, Mann-Whitney U test and Pearson’s Correlation found no statistically-significant difference between the levels of student interaction, correlation of student interactions to success, and student performance levels between the students from the online course built on the basis of the FICECLC Theory and the students from the online course not built on the basis of the FICECLC Theory. Themes from semi-structured interviews found that social interaction in an online course is not a precondition for course success, but an interactive course content and instructor support, when oriented to promoting application based course exercises, are. The interaction between the student, content, and instructor can lead to deep learning if the interactions among them are multi-directional and centered on content-based exercises.</p>
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PROQUEST/oai:pqdtoai.proquest.com:10125250 |
| Date | 02 August 2016 |
| Creators | Abedi, Ali |
| Publisher | Northwest Nazarene University |
| Source Sets | ProQuest.com |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | thesis |
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