This multiple-article dissertation explores institutional support for student academic engagement through the lens of the Academic Communities of Engagement (ACE) framework. A literature synthesis explores the current research on teaching assistant (TA) support in online and blended environments in higher education, with a special emphasis on their role in providing support for affective engagement, in addition to supporting cognitive and behavioral engagement. The review suggests that additional research needs to be done in this area to better understand the role of TAs in online environments and how institutions can prepare them for this role through meaningful training. The second article provides insight into students' barriers to learning online and how the institution can support these students. Researchers gathered survey results of 1295 university students regarding the barriers they experience and the support they receive from the institution to support their academic engagement. Descriptive statistics and thematic coding revealed specific practices institutions could implement to help students overcome barriers to fully engaging in their learning. The third article presents how online teaching assistants (OLTAs) interact with students to support their engagement in online and blended learning courses and how a training course may influence their interactions. Researchers gathered data from a tracking instrument that documented OLTA-student interactions over a 2-week period and conducted interviews with 10 OLTAs. Descriptive statistics and thematic coding indicated that TAs supported students in several ways and that their training program most likely influenced how they approached these interactions.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BGMYU2/oai:scholarsarchive.byu.edu:etd-10759 |
| Date | 07 December 2022 |
| Creators | Tuiloma, Sara Hirschi |
| Publisher | BYU ScholarsArchive |
| Source Sets | Brigham Young University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Theses and Dissertations |
| Rights | https://lib.byu.edu/about/copyright/ |
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