An Exploration of How Interpersonal Relationship Development Between Undergraduate Learners and Instructors Impacts Student Engagement Within a Post-Secondary, Blended Delivery Environment
Date
2014-01-27
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Abstract
Today’s dynamic educational landscape challenges post-secondary institutions to create engaging learning opportunities that meet a diversity of demands. In response to diverse requirements, including enhanced utilization of resources such as time and space, blended delivering curricula play an important role within post-secondary institutions and increased use of this pedagogy is anticipated. Blended delivery is a combination of face-to-face and online activities to create a distinct learning environment, thereby presenting increased choices and challenges to adult learners, instructors, and post-secondary institutions.
While acknowledging the complexities within the educational landscape, scholarly research has endorsed the criticality of interpersonal relationship development between adult learners and instructors. Yet, little attention has been afforded to this important element within a post-secondary, undergraduate, blended delivery environment. To address this gap, this study explored adult learners’ and instructors’ experiences of interpersonal relationship development within a post-secondary, undergraduate, blended delivery learning environment and the impact of these relationship elements and dynamics on student engagement. Informed by social interdependence theory this qualitative research drew upon interpretive phenomenology. Through twelve interviews and explication of data, participants’ collective experiences were revealed which highlighted synergies that could be created through intersections between interpersonal relationship development themes of foundation, conversation, mutuality, and independence, which in turn, promoted deeper student engagement. Synergistic interpersonal elements and dynamics between adult learners and instructors illuminated how learning processes and interpersonal exchanges could be enacted to enhance student engagement in a post-secondary, undergraduate, blended delivery environment, thereby providing considerations for enhancing educational praxis. Opportunities to further explore and enhance critical interpersonal facets between adult learners and instructors within post-secondary, undergraduate, blended delivery environments were also identified from this study.
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Education--Adult and Continuing
Citation
Peacock, M. J. (2014). An Exploration of How Interpersonal Relationship Development Between Undergraduate Learners and Instructors Impacts Student Engagement Within a Post-Secondary, Blended Delivery Environment (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/24893