Student Barriers to Active Learning in Synchronous Online Classes: Characterization, Reflections, and Suggestions

TL;DR

This paper identifies and characterizes various student barriers to active learning in synchronous online classes, providing insights to help educators design more effective, student-centered online courses.

Contribution

It offers a comprehensive thematic analysis of student barriers in online active learning, including a practical barrier list for educators to improve course planning.

Findings

Identified human, technological, and environmental barriers

Barriers vary in frequency, importance, and exclusiveness

Using the barrier list benefits novice educators in course design

Abstract

As more and more face-to-face classes move to online environments, it becomes increasingly important to explore any emerging barriers to students' learning. This work focuses on characterizing student barriers to active learning in synchronous online environments. The aim is to help novice educators develop a better understanding of those barriers and prepare more student-centered course plans for their active online classes. Towards this end, we adopt a qualitative research approach and study information from different sources: social media content, interviews, and surveys from students and expert educators. Through a thematic analysis, we craft a nuanced list of students' online active learning barriers within the themes of human-side, technological, and environmental barriers. Each barrier is explored from the three aspects of frequency, importance, and exclusiveness to active online classes. Finally, we conduct a summative study with 12 novice educators and explain the benefits of using our barrier list for course planning in active online classes.