Snapshots of Student Behavior During Online Learning

Introduction: A significant technology-related challenge in online higher education pertains to students’ abilities to regulate motivation when learning on their own. There is little data on how students structure their online learning experiences, making it difficult for educators to know how best to utilize course technology. In this talk, I discussed an innovative method of collecting “snapshots” of student behavior during online learning sessions. Methods: 73 participants were recruited from an introductory online course in HTML and JavaScript programming. Sampling procedures were programmed into the class software, wherein a pop-up questionnaire appeared at random intervals (experience sampling) or after a key event (event sampling) while the student was logged into the class. Results: Over the course of 928 event-sampled questionnaires and 1,738 experience-sampled questionnaires, significant proportions of students reported that they were performing general multitasking behaviors, as opposed to social multitasking, Internet multitasking, and learning-directed multitasking behaviors. Results from event-sampled and experience-sampled questionnaires mirrored each other. Discussion: These data provide empirical snapshots of how often multitasking is occurring during online coursework, while also offering potential for investigations into what types of tasks students are most likely to be doing besides coursework, and for whom this multitasking is distracting as opposed to motivating.