Supporting the Socio-Emotional Aspects of Online Learning

The COVID-19 outbreak required instructors to quickly redesign the subject presentation for the online environment. In dealing with this emergency, educators may have focused their energies primarily on putting learning and assessment activities into online context rather than working to support the socio-emotional aspects of learning such as belonging and motivation. As a result, online classrooms may lack social presence, causing students to be worthless and lose motivation. The research findings of Borup, West and Thomas show that instructors can support positive socio-emotional outcomes for online students by providing video feedback comments. The purpose of this short answer is to briefly review Borup’s work. And in doing so, highlight three key design considerations for creating and providing video feedback comments to support socio-emotional outcomes for online students. Limitations and implications for future research, including cultural and inclusion issues, are also discussed.

When designing for online learning in higher education, it is essential for educators to consider how to support positive socio-emotional outcomes for students, such as a sense of belonging to the learning community. This is because online learning is more distributed, socially isolated, and asynchronous than its face-to-face counterpart (and students have fewer opportunities for ever-synchronized social interaction with peers or instructors. may cause them to feel.

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced face-to-face instructors to quickly reimagine subject presentation for the online environment.While dealing with this emergency, it is likely that these instructors were primarily focused on successfully transitioning face-to-face learning and assessment activities to online context. Therefore, they may lack the capacity to think about how best to support the socio-emotional aspects of learning in this new environment. Perhaps unsurprisingly, anecdotal evidence suggests that many students who make the rapid mandatory transition to online learning experience feelings of displacement, social isolation, and loss of motivation For some students, these feelings may be exacerbated by the anxiety associated with the pandemic.

According to a study by Borup, West, and Thomas (2015), instructors can support socio-emotional outcomes for students by making relatively simple design choices regarding assessment feedback. More specifically, the study showed that online students were more supported, valued, and encouraged when instructors provided assessment feedback in the form of asynchronous video recordings instead of text. While the socio-emotional advantages of video feedback can be interpreted in terms of media wealth theory, it is argued that video feedback conveys rich speech cues such as tone and speed of voice, facial expressions and body language, which are not found in the text. The purpose of this short answer is to briefly review the work of Borup et al. And in doing so, it highlights three key design considerations for using video feedback to support positive socio-emotional effects. First, video feedback may contain messages that are qualitatively different from text-based feedback. Content analysis conducted by Borup et al. Showed that text-based feedback tends to highlight comments highlighting specific strengths, weaknesses, and areas of improvement related to the task. In contrast, video feedback more frequently included general and specific praise for students’ work, as well as comments aimed at strengthening the relationship between instructor and student (for example, using the student’s name). As shown in the broader feedback and online learning literature, both praise and relational comments are useful for improving social presence, strengthening feelings of trust, and helping students stay supported and motivated. Second, the use of video feedback should be logically timed within the teaching time. Borup et al. and others argue that it is important for educators to develop a sense of community and belonging in the first few weeks of the teaching period. Also, when feedback on assessment tasks is given in a timely manner, students can gain a greater sense of worth, support and social presence.

He asked the instructors to post their feedback no later than 1 week after the review was submitted. Therefore, in the context of the rapid transition to online learning, students may feel more valued and motivated if they receive short, personalized and positively framed video feedback recordings immediately after the shift occurs (for example, one week after the next assessment task is submitted).

Third, video feedback can be more effective for certain types of students than others. For example, students who are usually moderate to high achievers but do poorly on an assessment task after the rapid transition to online learning (possibly due to health or well-being issues) may benefit from a more personalized and supportive communication style. Provides video feedback. Under these circumstances, Borup et al. (2015) argues that it is important for educators to be highly aware of keeping their body language, expressions and tones of voice positive, so that they do not inadvertently pass on information that could be interpreted as negative or discouraging.

These three design considerations guide instructors to create video feedback recordings in the context of the rapid transition to online learning caused by COVID-19. However, Borup et al. There are two main limitations to the work done by him and must be addressed. First, the study was conducted on a variety of mixed distribution issues, where students also had the option to attend face-to-face lessons.

This context is different from the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, where online learning and social isolation were unexpected and imperative. Therefore, more research is needed to examine the effectiveness of the design considerations discussed here in purely online environments, especially where both instructors and students expect to work in face-to-face presentation modes.

Second, the study authors failed to measure the perceptions and opinions of students from equality groups or from different cultural backgrounds, or students with accessibility issues, English language difficulties, or special learning needs. In fact, this is a common limitation of video feedback literature in general and deserves more empirical attention. In particular, additional qualitative research is needed to explain whether there are unique needs, perceptions, and preferences among such students regarding online learning and video feedback, and whether their socio-emotional needs when working online differ from the rest of the cohort.