9    Embodiment and Engagement in an Online Doctoral Research Methodology Course

A Virtual Ethnographic Study

Gale Parchoma, Marlon Simmons, Michele Jacobsen, Dorothea Nelson, and Shaily Bhola

To inform continual improvement in doctoral research course design, the research team drew upon insights from practice and aggregate findings from internal surveys of student and alumni engagement in previous years’ offerings of an advanced research methodology course at one research-intensive Canadian university. Since multiple sections of this doctoral research course were offered each year at the research site, with 16–20 enrolments per section, and since this course was foundational in introducing doctoral-level learners to advanced research methods, we decided that it was critical to understand deeply the nature of learners’ online interactions and engagements using insights from Zawacki-Richter and Anderson (2014) as part of our redesign process. Students engage in the course online through two learning management systems (LMS): Desire 2 Learn (D2L) and Adobe Connect. In previous sections of this course, student interactions had taken place primarily via asynchronous communications facilitated through weekly text-based online discussions and group projects. Synchronous discussions had typically taken place during a series of three to four Adobe Connect two-hour audio sessions, dispersed across one term.

In this chapter, we report findings from the first year of a two-year study of purposefully designed and sequenced cycles of (1) weekly instructor-designed, formal, asynchronous text-based interactions; (2) periodic instructor-designed, formal, voice-based Adobe Connect sessions; and (3) less formal, student-led, voice-based Adobe Connect coffee sessions in one online doctoral research methodology course. The goals of this study were (1) to examine critically our own design and teaching practices in this doctoral course; (2) to engage with, extend, and problematize dimensions on which student engagement has been described, measured, and reported in the broader peer-reviewed literature; and (3) to seek ethnographic traces of diverse forms of student engagement, including student reports of perceived embodiment, within our data sets.

Literature Review

The first section of this literature review examines conceptualizations of student engagement. The second section posits an extension to the literature on conceptualizations of embodiment to include the potential for embodied student experiences of engagement in online courses. The third section considers interdependencies among conditions for learning, the social-material complexities of learning environments, and engagement. We conclude the review with an examination of liminal spaces that can either inspire or disrupt student engagement.

Student Engagement

French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1964) defined engagement as “our presence when things, truths, and values are constituted” that “summons us to the tasks of knowledge and action” (p. 25). This is well aligned with the definition of student engagement as “the interaction between the time, effort and other relevant resources invested by both students and their institutions intended to optimize the student experience and enhance the learning outcomes” (Trowler, 2010, p. 3). Both definitions require that those involved in learning and teaching be actively present and focused on achieving shared goals.

It has been argued that student engagement can be enriched by active educational practices involving collaborative tasks and problem-based forms of learning (Boyer Commission, 1998; Carini, Kuh, & Klein, 2006; Kuh, 2001, 2009; Nomme & Birol, 2014; NSSE, 2015; Reid 2012). Reid (2012) contended that the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) is designed to estimate the amount of time and effort that students put into educational endeavours. NSSE reports have indicated correlations between student engagement practices and active and collaborative learning (Kuh, 2009). Canadian institutions of higher education use NSSE results to understand student engagement better (NSSE, 2015). However, Reid (2012) cautioned that NSSE methods are limited since they cumulatively report students’ experiences over a whole year rather than within a course.

Our study examined student engagement and learning in two instances of an individual inquiry-based doctoral research methodology course. Inquiry-based pedagogy comprises “practices that promote student learning through guided and, increasingly, independent investigation of complex questions, problems, and issues, often for which there is no single answer” (Lee, 2003–04, p. 2). In the research site’s Doctorate of Education program, students are supported in becoming practitioner-scholars who link research to professional practice as a key component of their learning. Therefore, students’ development of working knowledge—coming to see the role of research in understanding and eventually improving “the actual working practices of experienced practitioners in their field” (Sgouropoulou, Koutoumanos, Goodyear, & Skordalakis, 2000, p. 111)—is a central goal.

Where asynchronous, text-based communications have been, for more than a decade, the primary online learning environment of higher education (Bell, 2015; Garrison, 2011; McConnell, 2006), Sgouropoulou et al. (2000) argued that, when learners are practitioners developing research expertise “in real-world working contexts, this kind of [text-based] technology [alone] proves to be insufficient” (p. 111). In response, Jones, Asensio, and Goodyear (2011) identified three priority areas for networked learning research and practice:

(1) the use of asynchronous communications technologies to support collaborative learning among geographically and/or temporally distributed groups of students; (2) the use of synchronous video communications to allow remote access to live lectures and demonstrations; and (3) approaches which mix the use of Web resources with asynchronous or synchronous interpersonal communication. (p. 24)

The third focus aligns well with Dixson’s (2010) argument that there can be a connection between the use of multiple communication channels and higher student engagement and a correlation between student-student and student-instructor communication and higher student engagement. More recently, Bell’s (2015) findings have indicated that learners’ written text in asynchronous online forums, though reflective, is primarily the product of individual thought rather than collaborative interaction. Voice, however, as communicated through synchronous spaces, can facilitate an immediacy that contributes to the development of social presence and trust and support the collaborative construction of knowledge.

Taking Jones et al.’s (2011), Dixson’s (2010), and Bell’s (2015) findings into consideration, we adapted the existing course design. It was important to augment the existing design, which included

1. 1. weekly text-based asynchronous communications;
2. 2. periodic (three to four per term), more formal, instructor-designed and led, synchronous Adobe Connect sessions in which learners were given opportunities to reflect and build upon their weekly asynchronous, text-based D2L postings in response to course readings, to query their progress in meeting course requirements, and to receive guidance from the course instructor; and
3. 3. interspersed, less formal coffee sessions in which students were simply invited to join an Adobe Connect session and check in with their instructor and their peers in order to lead conversations on what they were thinking about (Bell, 2015), where their inquiries were taking them (Lee, 2003–04), and any challenges that they were encountering.

By including various opportunities for students to engage across the modes of more and less formal channels for communication and interaction (Dixson, 2010; Jones et al., 2011), it was our goal to provide multiple enriched ways to engage actively in educational practices involving collaborative tasks and problem-based forms of learning (Boyer Commission, 1998; Carini et al., 2006; Kuh 2001, 2009; Nomme & Birol, 2014; Reid 2012).

Embodiment

Although the notion of embodiment might initially seem to be out of place in a discussion of designing online learning, Winn (2003) has forwarded an argument that learning is situated in complex interactions among our minds, our bodies, and our physical and/or digital environments. Within this complex set of relations, our minds need environmental feedback transmitted via our bodily senses and constructed by our bodily actions in order to make sense of ever-changing environmental conditions. Winn argues that our physical bodies “serve to externalize the activities of our physical brains in order to connect cognitive activity” to physical and digital environments, and he refers to “this physical dimension of cognition” as embodiment (p. 7). Although his argument is sufficiently current to be of use in an interest in virtual/online environments, it is rooted in earlier inquiries into interdependencies among mind, body, and environment for the purposes of understanding experiences in relation to learning. For example, in his work on the embodied nature of human perceptions and cognitions, Merleau-Ponty (1964) argued that without his “‘lived body’ [he would] cease to consciously experience the world” (p. 239). Because the processes of learning require conscious attention to experiences situated within an environment, it follows that conscious experiences of being in and interacting with an environment cannot be separated into differing cognitive and physical dimensions of learning because these dimensions co-constitute each other.

Max van Manen (1997) interrogated the concept of embodiment with the aim of identifying co-constituting dimensions that can be examined to understand the complexities of experiences. His work resulted in a four-dimensional framework, which we have translated into embodied dimensions of online learning experiences: (1) corporeality: experiences of what learners are physically doing as they learn; (2) spatiality: experiences of where learners are physically situated when they are learning; (3) temporality: experiences of time as learners are involved in learning; and (4) relationality: experiences of learners’ interactions with others (including their instructor, peers, learning resources, and mediating technologies that connect learners within an online learning environment).

Because the technologically mediated nature of online learning influences corporeality, spatiality, temporality, and relationality, it is worth considering online teaching and learning environments as partially designable and partially emergent. Learning experiences emerge through reciprocal interplays between human and material (Sørensen, 2009) elements of the networks that connect them. Thoughtful designs for learning can play a key role in constructing and stabilizing these connections by considering the embodied dimensions of online learning experiences.

Embodied Engagement as Embeddedness

Winn (2003) linked his explication of embodied learning to the concept of embeddedness, an “interdependence between cognition and environment” (p. 7) that leads back to our discussion of student engagement. Trowler’s (2010) definition of student engagement as interactions among the time, effort, and relevant resources directed toward optimizing students’ experiences and enhancing learning outcomes can be linked to Winn’s (2003) concept of embeddedness, in which “the embodiment of cognition in physical action and the embeddedness of cognition” within interactions across physical and digital environments “are closely connected” (p. 7). Stolz (2015) extended this argument by indicating that engagement as a way of becoming embedded in a teaching and learning context is not only cognitive but also emotional, practical, and aesthetical. By reflectively and reflexively considering the complexities of conditions that influence active student engagement, and the embodied dimensions through which online learners experience learning, we can come to a deeper understanding of the socio-material contexts in which our professional practices are situated.

Liminality

A key factor in understanding varied levels of student engagement, varied capacities to become embodied and embedded in a learning experience, is the encounter with a liminal space. The term “liminality” has been explored widely in the context of a transitional space that connects the previous state of a learner’s understanding with the new and transformed state. This in-between space is often “uncomfortable or troublesome” (Wood, 2012, p. 200) for the learner and involves a transformation in her or his “ontology or subjectivity” (Land, Rattray, & Vivian, 2014, p. 200). Meyer and Land (2005) have expressed liminality as a liquid space that transforms and is transformed by the learner when he or she travels across it. The learner can experience a sense of being suspended in this space (Meyer & Land, 2005), oscillating between the previous understanding and the new perspective (Orsini-Jones, 2006). Land, Meyer, and Baillie (2010) have discussed the journey through a liminal space as comprising the pre-liminal, liminal, and post-liminal spaces. In the pre-liminal space, learners encounter troublesome knowledge, and when they eventually pass through the liminal space they are transformed and hold a changed perspective in the post-liminal space. However, experiencing liminality is not as simple, linear, and compartmentalized as suggested by this categorization. Walker (2013) argues that “too much uncertainty in this liminal state and the learner will not be able to progress beyond a surface understanding. Not enough uncertainty and the learner will not make the required transformation” (p. 250). The liminal process is recursive; it subjects the learner to back and forth movements between prior conceptions and emergent ideas (Land et al., 2010).

The participants in our study were successful, experienced, professional practitioners, many of whom work in leadership roles in their home institutions and are in the beginning stages of becoming practitioner-scholars; therefore, linking research to professional practice is a key component of their doctoral learning experiences. A critical part of this learning process is letting go of the assuredness of current professional expertise in order to adopt an openness to unexpected research findings. Therefore, this liminal learning space can be fraught with ontological and epistemological challenges for students as they encounter troublesome knowledge, which can disrupt engagement/embeddedness.

Our Study

Our study is situated in the redesign of a Doctorate of Education online course. The course is considered foundational for introducing doctoral-level learners to advanced research methodologies. Our overarching research question was how can purposefully designed cycles of less formal, synchronous, auditory discussions, and more formal, asynchronous, textual discussions, support enhanced student engagement and learning? We also explored how less formal, synchronous, auditory communications can support collaborative student development of working research knowledge and how more formal, asynchronous, textual communications can support a student’s development of personal research knowledge.

Participants

Four of 13 doctoral students in the 2015 fall semester offering of our redesigned doctoral methodology course agreed to participate in the study. Three participants were female, and one was male.

Methodology

Drawing from the traditional field of ethnographic research, virtual ethnography seeks to “explore the making of boundaries and the making of connections, especially between the ‘virtual’ and the ‘real’” (Hine, 2004, p. 26.). Historically, ethnography attempted to “gain an understanding of the symbolic meanings attached to the patterns of social interactions of individuals within a particular group” (Cole & Knowles, 2001, p. 17). It involves “systematic investigation through a process of extensive and extensive participant observation, participation, and interviewing within a designated cultural group” (p. 17).

Hine (2004), in her summary of online research methods, noted that “virtual ethnography is, ultimately, an adaptive ethnography which sets out to suit itself to the conditions in which it finds itself” (p. 2). Hine (2000) offered 10 principles necessary for virtual ethnography, which has guided our study. We can understand through ethnography the various ways in which the Internet can be socially meaningful, insofar as the Internet can be understood as both culture and cultural artifact in which iterative and interconnected interactions can be positioned as virtual and embodied. Challenges for virtual ethnography involve not only identifying these sites of interaction but also making sense of how they come into being through contiguity. In doing so, we are invited to think about how the making and remaking of space through mediated interaction are significant for an ethnographic approach in virtual realms. Virtual space ought not to be thought of as an existing reality filled with disembodied emptiness. Rather, and as Hine (2000) stated,

it has rich and complex connections with the context in which it is used. . . . It also depends on technologies which are used and understood differently in different contexts, and which have to be acquired, learnt, interpreted and incorporated into context. (p. 25)

Social interactions as shaped through a miscellany of media contexts are well woven within heterogeneous flows of virtual interaction. Hine (2000) reminds us that, in terms of virtual spaces, an ethnographic approach seeks to make intelligible place as community and to make recognizable that which constitutes culture. Hence, virtual ethnography involves traversing fixed boundaries between and locations of subjects, at the same time delineating enactments of connectedness between the “‘virtual’ and the ‘real’” (p. 26). Delineation is not without its limits. Ethnographic entities within cyberspace can be configured and reconfigured, purposed and repurposed, by way of researcher reflexivity. “Practically, it is limited by the embodied ethnographer’s constraints in time, space and ingenuity” (p. 26).

Unlike traditional forms of ethnography, in which the researcher travels to the field, virtual ethnography maps and unmaps field connectivity within a governing network. Through these fields, the material of the virtual and that of the real have different boundaries as constituted by fluid, folding regional spaces. As a process, virtual ethnography involves recursive rather than fixed, stable, totalizing practices. Always already incomplete, virtual ethnography concerns context specificity as contingent on research questions instead of “truth” systems steeped in objectivity.

Critically reflecting on the ebb and flow of assemblages within interactive networks as well as grasping how the researchers developed a shared understanding of these assemblages under investigation are integral to virtual ethnography. Being submerged and continually engaged in the virtual allows the researcher to coordinate ethnography through teaching and dialoguing with students in virtual places as organized and inscribed through various synchronous and asynchronous arrangements. One can therefore get a sense of how social relations become meaningful in online settings that can enhance student learning.

Data Collection and Analysis

Traditionally, data collection for ethnographic researchers involves interviews, focus group discussions, participant observations, and archival and document analyses. Ethnography involves being present in the social field and being situated in the lived experiences of other cultures to understand the broader political landscapes. Our virtual ethnographic approach drew from and built on these traditional ethnographic methods. We broadened the scope of our instrumentation to include visual and written data as circumscribed by synchronous and asynchronous modalities. Specifically, our data collection involved five sources: (1) online interviews; (2) focus group discussions and archival data (asynchronous components of D2L): (3) transcripts from formal Adobe Connect sessions; (4) informal virtual coffee sessions); and (5) self-reflexive oral narratives.

We gained ethical approval from the university through an internal ethics review board. Participants were invited by a third-party recruiter. Data were anonymized by a third-party transcriber. To safeguard confidentiality and anonymity, pseudonyms were used for all participants. Our preliminary findings on data collected in the first year involved two rounds of individual and collaborative coding with continuous discussion. The first round of coding was descriptive, and through self-reflexivity we developed a shared understanding of the phenomena under investigation. That is, how are patterns of relations performed within the socio-material assemblage of an online graduate course?

We used the following guiding interview questions.

1. Provide a brief description of your experiences participating in the Adobe Connect teaching and learning sessions. How were they structured? What kind of impressions did you take away from them?
2. Provide a one-minute description of your experiences participating in Virtual Open Office Hour sessions. In what ways did you find Virtual Open Office Hours helpful with your individual or collaborative learning?
3. Can you say a bit about your experiences with the Virtual Coffee Session discussions in relation to the scheduled Adobe Connect teaching sessions? Did you find any difference in those two settings?
4. Did you see any differences in the ideas you shared in your posts on the Desire2Learn discussions, the written posts, and your verbal participation in the Adobe Connect sessions?
5. To what extent did you find the sequencing of the Adobe Connect sessions and the Desire2Learn discussions helpful for your learning?
6. Did you find that there were any differences in the kinds of ideas that you shared in voice through Adobe Connect sessions and the kinds of ideas you shared in your written posts on Desire2Learn in the threads?

In our second round of coding, we established analytical codes by way of alignment with the difference from and/or the extension of the reviewed literature. Through repeated corroboration of the coders across data sets, we were able to distill and formulate three themes that provide insights into what happened, how that happened, and why it did.

Preliminary Findings

The intention of our course redesign was to provide distinct but linked spaces for various kinds of interactions among learners, the instructor, and learning resources. The course outline, assessment rubrics, required and recommended readings, and weekly text-based discussion threads were housed in our D2L learning management system. Links to the periodic, more formal, instructor-designed and -led, two-hour Adobe Connect teaching sessions and interspersed, less formal, student-led, one-hour Adobe Connect coffee sessions were also accessed through D2L. We had anticipated that student-participants would distinguish among the different purposes of these modes of communication. However, their reports of their experiences engaging in the course via text and voice across the modes of communication varied.

Experiences of Designed Purposes of Text- and Voice-Based Interactions

We expected student-participants would primarily perceive weekly text-based discussion D2L forums as spaces for posting reflections on readings and posting draft work for peers’ and the instructor’s feedback. Although the students consistently engaged in these activities, a substantial number of postings also included reflections on Adobe Connect auditory discussions. For example, Stella posted the following comment in the discussion during the second week:

I enjoyed getting connected with all of you during our first on-line session last week. I appreciated listening to the discussion and learning more about the concepts around methods and methodology for our research. After reflecting on your posts, the readings, and the conversation during our first Connect session, I am already shifting some of my thinking and uncovering new understandings that will guide my future research.

Many of the postings also included methodological position taking followed by queries about potential implications for specific choices. An example from each participant follows.

Stella: I do not believe that there is a universal truth that exists, although I do believe in the concept of an overriding universal morality. Or at least that such a concept should exist. . . . I think that duo-ethnography is something that I should explore.

Amy: I echo [a peer’s] sentiments when it comes to wondering how complicated it will be to be a pragmatic researcher. I, too, think that it is so early in the course, and I have a lot to learn. I am cautiously taking it all in. . . . I think when we talked in the summer my caution had to do with this week’s topic. Believing that you were more positivist inclined, I was questioning whether you would be able to sustain research that seemed to be at odds with that.

Zack: To me, this week’s readings have asked us to consider not merely positions and/or paradigms, and/or the positives and negatives of one position or paradigm over the other, of if there are even positives or negatives at all; rather, these readings have illuminated the “dilemma” of being researchers who have chosen to research ourselves: that is, humankind. . . . As such, these readings have brought to the fore the following persistent topic/dilemma: that one is “required,” as a subject, to reflect on and eventually project one’s subjectivity, which is explicated through our alignments with certain ontological, epistemological, axiological, and methodological stances, one of which may be one’s choosing to disregard and not align with any of these, which is a stance in and of itself.

Mary: Do we not, as researchers, have to become aware of, what I will package as, “biases” and then remove those biases, ourselves, our “distinction,” and any others that do not ensure the research findings can stand on their own, and gather those that do?

We perceived that the primary purposes of the more formal, two-hour, auditory, Adobe Connect synchronous sessions were for the instructor to lead discussions of key concepts and to respond to learners’ requests for clarifications of expectations for assessed work. However, these sessions became dominated by further advice seeking on assignments in relation to implications for specific methodological choices. For example, Zack expressed a concern that, in choosing a specific methodology, he would first have to “lay out the philosophy of [his intended research] questions” and then decide on “an overarching question on top of that.” He then asked for the instructor’s advice on how to work through that process.

The less formal, one-hour, Adobe Connect coffee sessions were intended to be unstructured spaces for learners to lead and engage in social and scholarly dialogues. However, student-participants reported perceiving few, if any, differences between the more formal and the less formal auditory sessions. Three of four participants reported not being especially aware of which type of auditory session they were participating in in a particular week. Rather, they were more focused on just “attending” a weekly class (Amy) in order to check in with their peers and the instructor and to “keep up the momentum that everyone” sought (Stella). In the focus group interview, the interviewer was asked to clarify the difference between the more formal teaching sessions and the less formal coffee sessions, and the explanation was understood clearly only when the delineation between one- and two-hour sessions was made. During her interview, Amy reflected on the focus group and said that she “was maybe the one who didn’t really see a huge difference between the two.” She went on to explain that the “norm” for her was to attend “weekly classes” and that on a given day she “actually wasn’t even usually aware of when” she was “attending a one- or two-hour class.”

Tracing through the evidence of what happened during the first year of our study, we did not find that student-participants experienced the more formal text-based D2L discussions and audio-based Adobe Connect teaching sessions as different from the less formal Adobe Connect coffee sessions (as we thought they would be). Rather, our three designed teaching and learning spaces became overlapped and entangled and influenced participants’ experiences of all three modes of communication that we set out to research as well as the roles of recordings of both more and less formal Adobe Connect sessions.

Experiences of Engagement of Learning Through Text and Voice

Although our D2L data indicate that the student-participants were highly engaged in the weekly text-based postings, their focus group and individual interview accounts of what and why they posted varied across cognitive, emotional, and practical considerations. Cognitively, they were concerned with posting refined ideas and defending the ontological and epistemological positions that underpinned their methodological choices and requesting feedback from their peers and providing feedback to them. For example, Zack reported that, when he posted content on D2L, he wanted to be confident that he was supporting a position that he had taken in an Adobe Connect voice-based session. He wanted to take the “time to filter through the books” to ensure that what he wanted to say was “just right” because he did not want to cite an author “out of context.” He wanted to write “exactly what he wanted to say” without “misconstruing it,” make it “nice and clear,” cite the author to whom he was referring, and “even provide the page number.” He also wanted to hear what his peers were “thinking” in relation to his postings and the readings because

you’re reading famed scholars who have thought about this well. I wanted to hear about “Joe” and “Jane” who were in this course with me, who were at the same level as me, and have never thought about it to that level. That’s how we are all going to get there, right?

Amy provided a similar account of her experiences of posting in the text-based discussions. She said that before she felt comfortable contributing she wanted time to “deliberate” and that her “strength” was “writing.” However, she did not “necessarily like the back and forth on the D2L discussion boards” because sometimes people “have very different views,” and “it sometimes feels like you will always have people that want to have the last word.” Mary noted that she was “very methodical” in her preparations for posting to D2L. She “typically printed” others’ postings, read them carefully before she chose the ones that she would “respond to,” and then went back to readings to be sure that she was referring to “exactly the notion” being discussed. Stella suggested that, for people who are “very reflective and like to take their time and really need to ruminate and think about” what they want to say, “the D2L discussion board[s]—if people respond to them—would be [the most] useful [part of] the entire process.”

Emotional considerations also played a role in their text-based posts and contributions to audio discussions. Stella reported her sense of the importance of interpersonal relationships, in terms of both the entire class becoming “one community” and her belonging to a sub-community of four class members who maintained closer bonds through “Sunday night Skype meetings” in which they “continued conversations” and discussed their weekly class “experiences.” Amy expressed her impression that, because the content of the course was challenging, she and her classmates were reluctant to speak in the Adobe Connect sessions, especially in the beginning, because “people were afraid.” Similarly, in the early D2L discussions, there was “just a lot of uncertainty with people—with all of us, I guess—understanding the terminology or understanding the theories involved.” Mary noted that, in order to feel confident that she was ready to contribute during the Adobe Connect sessions, she would do “a little bit of pre-read outside of the assigned readings” so that she was “prepared to offer a little bit more contribution.” She added that over time she thought that the class came to “love the conversations” held in the Adobe Connect teaching sessions so much that they would take the lead away from the instructor to deal directly with topics that were “pressing for people.”

In comparison, in preparation for the coffee sessions, Mary appreciated having an opportunity to reflect on “key writers that were going to be discussed” and have “some questions ready.” She thought that this was why later on in the term, in the “less structured” coffee sessions, “everyone had lots to talk about.” Zack noted that “the first coffee session was a little rough because everyone was new to each other” and therefore reluctant to speak, but once they felt free enough to ask classmates how they were doing anxieties started to dissipate. He added that perhaps “because they were called coffee sessions they had a bit more of a fun sound to them,” and over time he and his classmates were not as concerned that less well-thought-out comments would have “bad outcomes,” so they were less anxious about saying “something stupid” or “I don’t agree.”

Reports of practical considerations that influenced engagement focused on functionalities of the technologies and sensitivity to effective use of time. Zack noted how many times he and his classmates encountered problems “with the technology,” and “that’s quite frustrating,” but he remarked that it was a shared problem, “a shared clumsiness, and you got to feel good amongst each other because of it.” Amy noted that she did not “mind the Adobe Connect sessions” when they were “working.” She liked that they were synchronous because she felt that she was “in [and part of] a class.”

All participants reported frustration with the amount of time in the Adobe Connect sessions that a subset of peers took to query the instructor about grading. Each of the participants reported that the assessment rubrics were sufficiently detailed, and repeatedly listening to a subset of peers wanting direct instruction on how to get top grades left them “tuning out” because they experienced these times as “distracting” and “dead.”

Mary recounted having to learn how not to lose time by accidentally deleting text written on the D2L discussion board. She noticed that, if she typed a post directly into D2L, she “would sometimes lose two or more paragraphs” and that “other people had the same problem.” “Sometimes you can lose the whole thing.” So she and others chose to write in Word and then copy and paste the text into D2L. By making the shift from writing directly into a discussion board to writing with a word processor, Mary found that she wrote in a more formal and detailed way, “almost like a paper.”

One component that we did not directly consider in our research questions was the audio recordings of both formal and informal Adobe Connect sessions. However, in individual interviews, two participants spoke about the importance of the recordings. Mary noted how much she valued the Adobe Connect sessions, but because of competing time commitments she had to “miss a couple,” which “interrupted” her learning, so later she would “go back and review the recordings” to catch up. Amy used the recordings for a different purpose. In the course that she took in the term after she had completed our course, she would go “back to listen to last term’s recordings” because, “after having gone through the class and understanding the material more,” she wanted “to go through” them to find the “focused” parts where she had asked questions and received responses from her instructor to check if her “understanding” of what she had heard “had changed.”

Experiences of Embodiment of Text and Voice

In our analysis of the dimensions of embodiment, we found traces of participants’ experiences that included (1) corporeality: experiences of what participants are physically doing when they are learning; (2) spatiality: experiences of where they are physically situated when they are learning; (3) temporality: experiences of time when they are involved in learning; and (4) relationality: experiences of their interactions with others (including their instructor, peers, learning resources, and mediating technologies that connect them within an online learning environment). We found these traces across participants’ reflections on D2L text-based postings, more and less formal audio Adobe Connect sessions, and Adobe Connect recordings. For example, Mary’s account of losing text carefully composed directly into D2L discussion spaces, and her linking of that loss at least partially to “using a touchy, ‘magic’ mouse,” provided a physical explanation of her decision to compose text using a word processor, with which Mary found that she wrote more formal and specific types of posts.

Zack described “the freedom” that he found in D2L discussions to link readings that he found “outside the required readings” in the course syllabus and sometimes readings that he had encountered in previous courses to respond to peers’ posts. He reported his spatial and temporal experiences of “freedom” as providing openings to “go off on tangents,” which he found “very important” for his learning. In comparing his experiences in Adobe Connect teaching sessions with his experiences in coffee sessions, Zack thought that the teaching sessions had “a more planned-out trajectory” from which he and his peers did not want to “divert.” His sensitivity to a more formally organized learning space encompassed assumptions about how learners were expected to engage. However, Mary reported that sometimes during the Adobe Connect teaching sessions class members did divert conversations to deal directly with different topics more “pressing” for them.

Stella noted “the course would not have been as successful for anyone, definitely not for me, if we did not have a regular space weekly where we would be able to speak to each other in real time.” She preferred the Adobe Connect teaching sessions because she found that they allowed time for the instructor to create opportunities to “dig a little deeper into content.” She valued “most of all” having “conversations and dialogue” about “the concepts” that she and her peers “were talking about” in relation to their “own research,” their “own work,” and their “own experiences.”

Amy, like her peers, worked hard to balance the demands of work, life, and study. She soon came to recognize her “multitasking” limitations during the Adobe Connect sessions. She reported that it took her “a long time to get used to listening and watching the chat posts,” and though she had planned to do so she did not “take notes.” She later followed up on topics raised in Adobe Connect discussions via D2L textual reflections on what she had heard. Like Amy, Mary was concerned about the ability to focus her attention during synchronous auditory sessions, so ahead of each session she prepared “sticky notes” with “questions” and references to “readings” so that she would feel more confident that she could speak to what she was thinking in real time.

Within the evidence of engagement and embodiment in our findings were different traces of participants’ concerns about relationality with their peers, their instructor, and their learning resources and how mediating technologies influenced embodiment in and engagement with learning.

Liminal Experiences

As the course progressed, participants continued to refine their methodological choices and rationales for their research. They also continued to oscillate between liminal tensions of assuredness and uncertainty. Participants reported varied experiences of uncertainty about key concepts involved in methodological decision making. In a first week D2L discussion post, Stella told a peer that she looked “forward to somewhat uncomfortable exchanges” as they discussed their current positions on making methodological decisions. Amy expressed a desire for

the clarity that comes from the ontological stance that allows one to believe in an objective, single reality. I long for the perceived simplicity of being a positivist, yet I cannot deny that my world is socially constructed, as I am constantly questioning my positionality. . . . Even with my superficial understanding, I feel an immediate affinity for such theories as Feminist Standpoint Theory and Critical Race Theory that, in themselves, denote a lack of a universal experience.

Amy wondered whether she was being “cowardly sitting on the fence if [she did] not go far enough down the continuum to define [herself] as a pragmatic researcher but stop[ped] short at situationalist.”

During the first week, Stella reported being “challenged by the idea of participatory research” in relation to her “work in this doctoral program.” Given her current understanding of “participatory research” as involving research participants “from the first moment of the research,” she could not conceptualize how that would be possible “given the requirement that we have a fully developed research proposal for candidacy and ethics review before we can begin to contact those who will be involved in our research.” By the third week, Stella had new concerns:

As I have read each of the articles/chapters so far in this course, I have identified with some aspects of each approach described. Just when I think I have located myself, I come across something about the approach that just doesn’t fit. I wonder if I can be a mixture of approaches, although so far I seem to be drawn to those that are (mostly) commensurate. I am somewhat fearful of candidacy as my head is spinning with all of the information presented thus far, and I do not know how I will sort out all epistemological approaches in order to defend the approach I (or rather my research question) choose.

Although his posts in the first and second weeks expressed assurance that Zack understood methodological decision making, by the third week he began expressing uncertainty:

What catalyzed this thought was my (today’s) post-coffee-session reflection on last week’s discussion regarding the Siegel article. I found it unsettling that I felt genuinely nervous (rare for me) to state my opinion. And, I would contend, that some of you felt the same way—like it was “risky” to say this or that. But . . . why? We are all intelligent adults, putting in a lot of hard work, studying complex and diverse issues, so, why should I feel worried?

Discussion of the Findings

Having drawn upon Bell’s (2015) propositions that learners’ written text in asynchronous online forums, though reflective, is primarily the product of individual thought rather than collaborative interaction and that synchronous voice facilitates an immediacy that contributes to the development of social presence and trust, and supports the collaborative construction of knowledge, we expected to find more distinct differences in how the participants interacted across modes of communication. Rather, we found that the asynchronous textual discussions, and the more and less formal synchronous audio sessions, interacted, overlapped, and entangled socio-material spaces (Sørensen, 2009). Relations performed in text and voice included frequent social interactions across modes of communication, including interactions directed toward building trust and community and interactions directed toward constructing individual and collaborative knowledge. Individual participants’ preferences for and comfort levels with communicating via text or voice appeared to be more influential in the emergence of patterns of relations and unpredictable based on the mode of communication. Patterns of communication became inter-referential (Chastine, Zhu, & Preston, 2006) as participants read textual posts and/or listened to audio recordings or, in one case, established a Skype back channel in order to reflect on previous communications and prepare for future text- and audio-based discussions.

Our findings support Dixson’s (2010) premises that there can be connections among the use of multiple communication channels, student-student and student-instructor communications, and student engagement. We found evidence of frequent, reflective, and reflexive student-student and student-instructor communications across different modes and of Stolz’s (2015) cognitive, emotional, and practical dimensions of student engagement. Cognitive engagement in both asynchronous and synchronous communications left traces of participants’ conceptual development and refinement, methodological decision making, and ontological/epistemological positioning and repositioning. Traces of emotional engagement were found in expressions of welcoming peers into discussions, desire for and formation of a course-based learning community, as well as at least one sub-community, and accounts of moments of assurance and anxiety. Traces of practical engagement focused on reports of technological disruptions and the resulting positive and negative impacts on engagement and on finding ways to make effective use of time.

Embodiment was identified by locating evidence of complex interactions among participants’ minds and bodies with physical and digital environments (Winn, 2003). We found evidence of each of van Manen’s (1997) four co-constituting dimensions of embodiment. The reports of learner-participants on what they were doing physically as they learned included the artifacts with which they were working—sticky notes, a “touchy” mouse, books, printed and digital discussion posts, audio recordings, and so on—and how working with these artifacts supported or hindered their engagement and learning. The reports on where participants were physically situated when they were learning included being in home offices and public workplaces and being logged on to D2L, Adobe Connect, university library databases, and so on. Accounts of temporal experiences of learning included references to balancing work, life, and study and often to previous courses. Relational interactions including with the instructor, peers, learning resources, and mediating technologies were identified across data sets and marked by the desire to be perceived as a competent member of a learning community. Across dimensions, the participants encountered and worked with challenging concepts and thought processes and periodically found themselves alone and/or together in liminal spaces (Meyer & Land, 2005).

Conclusion

Our analysis indicated that participants had various levels of awareness of the purposes of our designed and sequenced cycles of formal, asynchronous, text-based interactions; formal, synchronous, voice-based sessions; and less formal, student-led, voice-based coffee sessions in an online doctoral research methodology course. Yet it was evident that participants engaged deeply with each other, with the course instructor, and with learning resources across channels of communication. Evidence of cognitive, emotional, and practical dimensions (Stolz, 2015) of student engagement highlights the emergence of interacting, overlapping, and entangling socio-material spaces (Sørensen, 2009). Unlike Bell’s (2015) findings, we found that preferences for communicating via voice and/or text strongly influenced when, where, and how participants engaged in the course. Modes of communication did not privilege or preclude where learners engaged in social and/or scholarly interactions. Patterns of communication became inter-referential (Chastine et al., 2006), and both individual and collaborative knowledge-building activities were distributed across textual and auditory media. Even though learners were engaged in an online course, there were influential corporeal, spatial, temporal, and relational dimensions (van Manen, 1997) of embodied learning (Winn, 2003) that both distracted from and contributed to sustained cognitive, emotional, and practical engagement (Stolz, 2015).

One implication for design is that mature learners can benefit from the inclusion of multiple modes of communication to support sustained but diverse ways of experiencing engagement in an online doctoral course on advanced research methodologies. The informal coffee sessions served to extend participant interaction and engagement within and beyond the more formally designed discussion forums and synchronous teaching sessions. Although our findings suggest that enhanced instructional guidance on the purpose and intent of different modes of communication can increase students’ awareness, it was also evident that this varied awareness did not appear to detract from how students engaged with each other, the instructor, and the learning resources across different channels of communication. How and why participants engage across auditory and textual media will vary and are less predictable than previous research has indicated (Bell, 2015; Jones et al., 2011), which warrants ongoing evaluation and research.

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