Introduction

Blended synchronous learning (BSL) is a learning approach that enables online learners to participate in classroom learning activities from remote sites like another country by using technologies like real-time video conferencing. BSL has many educational benefits for onsite and online learners. For onsite learners, they have opportunities to interact with a wide variety of participants from other countries (Bower et al., 2015). Local learners can continue with classroom activities when they are absent from class due to health conditions or natural catastrophes (Wang et al., 2018). For online learners, while benefiting the convenience and flexibility of online learning, they enjoy live classroom atmosphere and high social presence of others (Wang & Huang, 2023).

Nevertheless, putting learners in a BSL setting will not make them highly engaged in the learning process, as many factors prohibit them from active participation. Existing research has identified that the engagement level of online learners is often lower than that of the classroom counterparts as they often have limited interactions with classmates or encounter technical difficulties (Wang & Huang, 2023). Therefore, increasing and maintaining the engagement level of online learners becomes crucial. The purpose of the study was to explore how to effectively engage online learners in the BSL setting. The research questions were:

• What are useful strategies to engage online learners in BSL?
• What are the learners’ perceptions of the strategies applied?

Conceptual Frameworks: Engagement and Interaction

Engagement is the learners’ physical and psychological effort involved in the learning activity. It has three dimensions - behavioral, emotional, and cognitive (Fredricks et al., 2004). Behavioral engagement is the observable behaviors necessary to the achievement of learning objectives, such as attendance, participation, and assignment completion. In an online learning environment, learner behavioral engagement is indicated by the number/frequency of visits, number of clicks/posts, time-on-task (Liu et al., 2015), number of page views, and time spent on pages (Henrie et al., 2015). Emotional engagement includes ‘both the feelings learners have about their learning experience, such as interest, frustration, or boredom, and their social connection with others at school’ (Henrie et al., 2015, p.37). Cognitive engagement is the learner’s investment in learning. It often includes self-regulation and metacognitive behaviors. Among the dimensions, behavioral engagement and emotional engagement are more observable, and cognitive engagement is less observable but more related to learning outcomes.

To be engaged, online learners must actively interact with learning content, the instructor, and peers via technology in BSL. The learning content must be authentic (Hew, 2018), relevant (Herrington et al., 2003), and challenging (Zepke & Leach, 2010). Using continuous e-assessment helps with engaging online learners (Holmes, 2017). The instructor’s enthusiasm and behavior affect learner engagement. After studying some highly rated MOOCs, Hew (2018) reports that the instructor’s accessibility and passion are among the key factors that affect learner engagement. Accessibility is the extent an instructor interacts with learners. A low degree of instructor accessibility may cause learners to feel that they are ignored, or no one cares about them. Passion is the positive power that drives an instructor to put effort into teaching. In addition, the interaction between learners and learners and between learners and the instructor helps in promoting learner engagement (Junco et al., 2010). Furthermore, technology is a mediating tool for online learners to participate in class activities from remote sites (Cloonan & Hayden, 2018). However, technology often becomes a limiting factor that prohibit learners’ participation and engagement. For instance, noise and echo reduce the clarity of oral communication and learners’ concentration and engagement in a BSL environment (Wang & Huang, 2023).

Though the engagement of classroom learners is equally important, the emphasis of this exploratory study was on online learners to explore how they could be engaged by applying certain strategies and their perceptions of the strategies employed. This study was conducted in two classes taking Masters’ programmes in a teacher training institute. There were 22 and 23 participants in the classes, respectively. There were 13 teaching weeks and 10 of which were conducted in the BSL mode. About 2-5 learners were online and the rest were in the physical classroom in each BSL session. The two courses were taught by the same instructor. One course (called H) heavily involved hands-on activities on various ICT tools and the other (called T) was more theoretical. The instructor was situated in the classroom. There were two cameras in the classroom, one focusing on the front area of the classroom where the instruction was frequently standing, and the other covering the entire room for online participants to observe what was happening in the room. The following strategies were purposefully applied in the BSL sessions to engage the online learners: • The online learners were required to keep their cameras on • The instructor frequently asked online learners to answer questions • The instructor designed interactive learning activities like online polls or quizzes • A teaching assistant (TA) at the classroom monitored the chat box and communicated with the online participants • Each learner gave peer feedback to the sharing by others • Pear Deck with embedded interactive learning activities was piloted in one session In Course T, the following strategies were employed: • Small group discussions using Zoom breakout rooms were involved with each group composing of 1 online and 3-4 classroom learners • An online template with scaffolding questions was created to facilitate group discussions • The online learners facilitated and presented their group discussions The instruments included online surveys and focus group discussions (FGDs). The online surveys with five-point Lickert scale items were administered at the end of the courses with some items being customized for each course. 18 and 16 learners responded to the surveys. Means and SDs were calculated. Three FGDs with 3-4 learners in each group were conducted via Zoom and each discussion lasted about an hour. Content analysis was carried out to code the responses collected from the FGDs.

Having group discussions (in Course T) was useful for engaging online learners. They actively participated and facilitated group discussions. Using online templates to facilitate group discussions made their discussions focused. They were highly engaged when they were presenting their discussion results to the class. In Course H, the learners also mentioned that they were more engaged when they were presenting their artefacts to the class than listening to others’ sharing. In both classes, they mentioned giving peer feedback engaged them. During the FGDs, the participants particularly mentioned that having a TA helped in many aspects. It enabled the instructor to pay close attention to the questions posted to the chat box promptly and enables them to know what was happening in the class when the connection was unstable. In addition, letting the online learner moderate group discussion was useful but challenging. They sometimes did not know who was talking as not every member was captured in the streaming video. Giving peer feedback was engaging. However, it was hard for them to give informative feedback as they were not familiar with the project topics of the other groups. In summary, the following strategies were identified useful for engaging online learners in BSL: - Group discussions using breakout rooms in Zoom - Online learners leading and presenting group discussions - Having a TA to keep contact with the online learners - Giving peer feedback on familiar topics Using an interactive tool like Pear Deck did not increase learner engagement. The design of learning content and activities seemed to be more important than the tools used. In addition, the learners did not feel that their engagement level was lower when they were online. This finding was inconsistent with the result reported in existing studies and need further investigation in the future.

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