Engaging students online: an analysis of students’ motivations for seeking individual learning development support

Presentation abstract This presentation outlines the key findings of a small-scale research project aimed to explore the motivations for student engagement in self-selecting learning development (LD) online tutorials. The study used a mixed methods approach, including an online survey (n=43) and online interview (n=5). The recruitment invitation was emailed to all users booking a tutorial (n=390) within the project timeframe (October 2020-April 2021). The generalisability of findings is limited by the low response rate (16.8%) as well as age bias of the sample (the over-24 age group was overrepresented at 75% of the sample despite being only 30% of the LD user population). Findings show that the main driver for engagement reported was participants’ limited confidence in their own academic writing abilities, which was consistently linked to attainment. Engagement was further motivated through a range of perceived impacts, including improved confidence and awareness of academic conventions. Participants reported a generally positive attitude towards online delivery, with key benefits including removing access barriers for students with complex commitments, travel and health issues. Conversely, the main downside of online tutorials was seen as diminished interpersonal contact. Qualitative data from both survey and interviews were further investigated using a discourse analysis framework. One key finding was that the path to LD engagement is often mediated by academic authority figures, who may exert a significant impact on learner self-views. The presentation was designed to initiate discussion on the implications of these findings for learning developers. One area of reflection I planned to submit for the participants’ consideration is how lessons learned from the enforced pivoting to online delivery can

The generalisability of findings is limited by the low response rate (16.8%) as well as age bias of the sample (the over-24 age group was overrepresented at 75% of the sample despite being only 30% of the LD user population).
Findings show that the main driver for engagement reported was participants' limited confidence in their own academic writing abilities, which was consistently linked to attainment. Engagement was further motivated through a range of perceived impacts, including improved confidence and awareness of academic conventions. Participants reported a generally positive attitude towards online delivery, with key benefits including removing access barriers for students with complex commitments, travel and health issues. Conversely, the main downside of online tutorials was seen as diminished interpersonal contact. Qualitative data from both survey and interviews were further investigated using a discourse analysis framework. One key finding was that the path to LD engagement is often mediated by academic authority figures, who may exert a significant impact on learner self-views.
The presentation was designed to initiate discussion on the implications of these findings for learning developers. One area of reflection I planned to submit for the participants' consideration is how lessons learned from the enforced pivoting to online delivery can

Community response
A range of themes emerged from this fascinating presentationfrom looking at online provision in the context of social justice, to treating it as a source of student empowerment, to making links with other online provisions, such as the Writing Café. What it made clear is that, despite the difficulties brought about by the Covid-19 crisis, some of the changes it inspired need to be maintained, particularly when it comes to enhancing students' sense of independence and ownership over their university studies. The affordances and obstacles of the online space require much reflection and analysis in order to humanise this new learning space and move forward in the most productive and meaningful way, especially when it comes to inclusivity and fair access (Loon, 2021). 3 respondents deferred to academic authority figures (lecturers and supervisors) shows a tendency to adopt a passive attitude to academic writing. On the other hand, the comments on the rapport with LD tutors demonstrated more balanced power dynamics through 'mutual understanding' and 'conversation'. It would be interesting to do the same survey in a year or two to see whether anything has changed post-pandemic (if there is such a thing). The presentation was also a nice reminder for us as learning developers to focus on empowering students and to try and help them develop their confidence for learning. Indeed, I would hazard saying that this underpins everything! Introducing Goodfellow's (2005) analytical framework, inspired by Gee's (1999) discourse analysis book, was very illuminating. The presenter used three discourse models: identities, social goods, and sign systems and knowledge to analyse students' responses to their engagement with an online module and to tease out the relationships between students' communication of their own identities as learners; their positioning within a set of academic power relationships; and their perspectives on types of academic writing and knowledge systems. I find the tool very powerful for learning developers to interpret student feedback from surveys or interviews, and to better understand the strengths of our provision in a holistic and systematic manner. I have also observed some of the benefits of online learning reported by the presenter in my own practice. I find an online one-to-one especially effective when it focuses on an assignment draft. There is enhanced accessibility to me as I can read the student's work easily on my device rather than looking at or using the student's screen. This can be particularly consequential for those who prefer working with PCs (Windows), like myself, and who struggle with MAC computers, which many of our students use. In the online setting, I also find it easier to provide written feedback simultaneously, which seems especially useful to students whose first language is not English.
What I was heartened to find in the presentation was the overall positive feedback the online tutorials received, as well as the fact that the majority of the students were seeking to improve their writing (n=38) over their grades ( concern in a post-pandemic Britain. But we have also observed challenges and limitations similar to the ones mentioned by the presenter. Quality of delivery for the live sessions, for example, is greatly dependent on the absence of technical issues. The alternative presented in the talkthe email-based tutorialssounds attractive and the Writing Café could benefit from something similar: an asynchronous method for students to receive feedback on specific issues. Nonetheless, as a student myself, seeing students from another university struggling with similar aspects of academic writing was also interesting and could be taken as indication of a much more systemic problem, with students having key gaps in their knowledge and understanding before coming to university. This had been observed in students before the pandemic and has likely only been furthered by the effect the pandemic had on learning. Overall, the presentation raised a number of critical points about online tutorials and provoked me to consider the email-based alternatives as potentially useful to the future development of the Writing Café. To further this study, a larger sample size would be excellent, as the study mentions it was held back by the low response rate. Additional investigation into the skewed response demographics could improve this too, although it could just be an anomaly caused by the small sample size.

Next steps and additional questions
This is worthwhile research in the context of social justice as raised in the conference keynote: who reaches out for support, why, and what barriers do they face? I wonder if you have any plans to look at why people might not access LD support, or to build on any of your findings to try to better reach those who do not use the service?
One idea which came to mind in terms of increasing response rates was to perhaps add one question for students to answer whenever they sign up for a session asking why they are signing up, then one question after the session to explore what they got out of it.

Author's reflection
Sharing details of this research project with the LD community has been exciting, and also an opportunity to reflect on this work with fresh eyes, almost a year after completion. It was also incredibly powerful to witness the community response building up through such While impact on practiceat individual, team and broader levelshas in fact been the main trigger for the research idea, once the project was completed, I could see there was a high risk of moving on to other commitments and not making the most of the evidence already gathered. In the early days of the project, I was sharing data with my colleagues on the goas soon as completed questionnaires were returned, or after I was conducting one more interview. We eagerly discussed the implications; moreover, as soon as I had put together a draft of findings, I shared a report which we debated wholeheartedly, considering implications on the restructuring of our online resources, our delivery modes and our provision. And yet, a few months on, it felt like we were once again looking for new sources of evidence.
Therefore, I feel that this conference presentation, as well as the publication of my research in JLDHE (Cirstea, 2022), followed by the lovely surprise to see the article selected as a topic of discussion by the JLDHE Reading Club, all gave the data a new life and another chance at making an impact, and becoming part of conversations that matter.
In terms of future plans, this heartening community response as well as a very productive  I feel that research has intrinsic benefits for teaching-focused professionals, by simply offering an opportunity to 'stop and think', to enter into a dialogue with our teaching and learning partnersstudents, colleagues and voices from the wider academic community.
All these have a major impact on one's thinking, which will therefore influence subsequent practice though in not so easily traceable or quantifiable ways. For all these reasons, I feel my small project has had some impact, and more than that, it has found its place as a small piece of the puzzle among all the exciting projects, reflections and ideas shared and debated at this conference.