Emotional Engagement of Students in E-Learning as an Example of a Project Management Course

Gushchin Aleksandr Nikolaevich ORCID: 0000-0002-3466-4038 PhD in Physics and Mathematics Associate Professor, Department of Urban Planning and Landscape Architecture, Ural State Academy of Architecture and Arts Karl Liebknecht str., 23, Sverdlovsk region, Yekaterinburg, 620075, Russia alexanderNG@yandex.ru Other publications by this author

Introduction

Electronic learning (e-learning) has turned from an exotic into a routine reality these days. Nevertheless, the opportunities offered by the new communication channel require in-depth study. The most interesting and least studied are the emotional aspects of e-learning. The subject of this article is the development of a system of emotional involvement of students in the study of an electronic course.

The term "involvement" comes from "to involve" - "to persuade to something, to involve in something, with an effort to introduce, drag somewhere" ^[1]. It was originally used in the legal field. The phrase "emotional involvement" has migrated to the field of art, where emotional involvement is considered the most important factor in the perception of works of art ^[2]. In pedagogy, the term emotional involvement is used infrequently, there are separate works, for example, N.V.Gabitova "Emotional involvement of students in the learning process through methods of surprise in English lessons" ^[3]. In the work of V. A. Chulyukov, O. A. Sidorov and V. M. Dubov, game elements are described, which, according to the authors, will ensure involvement in the educational process ^[4]. There is also the work of O.A.Kostyuchenko ^[5] to ensure the involvement of students in distance learning. The work was done during the pandemic. It is claimed that "during this time, a strategy has been worked out that ensures the effective involvement of all students in distance learning and the achievement of 100% learning outcomes." It seems that the real achievement of such a result would make all other attempts to develop pedagogical technologies meaningless.

In the context of this article, emotional involvement will be understood as the emotional component of learning, which creates motivation for students and involves them in the learning process on an electronic course. To form emotional involvement, it is necessary, first of all, to answer the question of what is the object of involvement – where (in what) to involve students. According to the works cited above, involvement should take place in the educational process.

The object of involvement is a social role

The author believes that involvement should be made in the social role that the graduate will eventually perform. According to I. Shubrt and his work "Social role is a forgotten topic of sociology" ^[6], the concept of social role goes back to R. Linton, who defined social role as a set of "expectations" related to the behavior of an individual who has a certain "status" (position) in society ^[7]. The peak of discussions on the topic of social roles was observed in the 70s of the last century, nevertheless, the interpretation of the social role as the sum of expectations is suitable for the purposes of this article. "By the term "waiting" Linton describes not only the role, but also the status. We expect certain behavior from persons with certain statuses and can make certain demands and requests to them."^[6]

In a broader context, it is necessary to use the concept of social intelligence. Let's consider the situation on a specific example of the course "project management", taught by the author according to the curriculum of the bachelors of the Faculty of Architecture ^[8]. The professional standard of an architect has a generalized labor function of level C "Management of the process of architectural and construction design of capital construction facilities and works related to their implementation" ^[9]. The course "project management" is designed to implement this function. From the point of view of social roles, the head of the process of preparing architectural and construction documentation belongs to the category of managers. It is in the social role of the leader that it is necessary to involve listeners. Fourth-year undergraduate students enrolled in the course, one way or another, already have experience in part-time project work, have already encountered various kinds of managers and have an idea of the leader as a social role. It is only necessary to give the audience the opportunity to discuss their expectations in order to have a collective idea – the sum of expectations – about the social role of the leader. The need to choose a broader context for a social role, the role of a project manager, is also explained by the fact that a range of possible life trajectories is important for bachelors, therefore, the role of a "leader in general" is closer and clearer to them. Something similar is said in the educational standard for bachelor's degree in the field of training 07.03.01 "Architecture", where the requirements for the results of mastering the educational program indicate the competence of the CC-3 "Is able to carry out social interaction and realize its role in the team" ^[10].

The mechanism of engagement

Next, let's look at the mechanisms of engagement. The best and most detailed mechanisms of engagement have been studied for computer games. We owe the emergence of the term "gamification" to computer games. In the work cited above by V. A. Chulyukov, O. A. Sidorov and V. M. Dubov, the main means of gamification are highlighted: mystery, action, challenge, risk, uncertainty, visibility of progress, emotional content. The authors conclude that one or two of the listed elements are sufficient for gemification: "... all games are based on one or two elements such as competition, time management, communication and others." The psychological aspects of involvement in computer games are studied in the work of N.S.Polunina ^[11]. According to the author, the psychology of a computer game can be considered based on the theory of role-playing by D.B.Elkonin, when a player identifies himself with a game role.

To be involved in the role, identification is necessary, it is necessary to imagine whether I can be in this person's place. The term identification was introduced by Z.Freud and has a long history of semantic content, which can be found in the work of N.Polevoy ^[12]. For the purposes of this article, it is important to describe the mechanism of social identification. "When a person chooses a group as an object of identification, the dominant strategy is social identity. According to the roles chosen by the groups as objects of identification, a person defines himself through identification with the group (groups). The strategy of social identity is reflected in self-descriptions and self-perception of a person as an image of his "I", when self-concepts relate to the image of the "I" as others see it" [ibid.]. It is this task that needs to be implemented during training, i.e. to create conditions under which the student can imagine himself in a new role, in a specific context – as a project manager.

It follows from the above that two components are necessary to identify oneself with a social role: the "image of the group" - the listener must have an idea of the group – the "sum of expectations" - and must be able to imagine himself in the group. Schematically, the identification situation is shown in Figure 1.

Psychological identification with one's social role forms social intelligence, which, in general, characterizes an individual's ability to adapt to society. For successful adaptation, it is necessary to understand the motives of other people's actions ^[13]. The scheme in Figure 1 is similar in idea to the famous Guilford social intelligence test ^[14]. In the Guilford test, the subject must also imagine himself in some new and unusual situation.

Didactic means of engagement

Let's clarify once again the teaching methodology of the course. The training takes place in a mixed mode: an online lesson is held once a week, the rest of the materials are posted in the electronic educational environment of the university and students must read them and complete tasks. The curriculum of the course consists of 15 topics, selected so that one topic (with two exceptions) falls within one week. The course itself was created in LMS Moodle. The training course is an elective course. Initially, 67 people enrolled.

To implement these capabilities and, taking into account the capabilities of LMS Moodle, the following didactic decisions were made:

1. Abandoning the traditional assessment system for each completed task:

a. the performance of educational tasks is encouraged by "achievements" - (achievements in youth slang), a fragment of the achievement system is shown in Figure 2; Figure 2 demonstrates that the achievement system provides more opportunities for encouragement than a standard assessment – you can award for completing work on time, for curiosity, etc.;

b. within the framework of the training course, two elements of the "seminar" type are provided - in LMS Moodle, this element is designed so that students evaluate the work of their colleagues and the quality of the assessment given by another listener;

2. Study assignments on each topic contain two components: mandatory and voluntary;

a. the mandatory part is necessary to move on to the next topic of the thematic curriculum and corresponds to the content of the training course;

b. the performance of optional (voluntary) tasks by students is an indicator of interest in the accepted social role;

c. the selection of subjects for voluntary assignments is based on the idea of a "social portrait of the head": various kinds of psychological tests, questionnaires for self-assessment of the head's competencies

3. full encouragement of time management skills, for this, the completion of each training topic and, accordingly, the transition to the next topic, become possible not only after the listener has completed the mandatory tasks of the topic, but also submitted a report on the time spent on each topic; the structure of the report is very simple: list the training tasks that have been completed, mark the time spent on their completion, write a list of tasks planned for the next week and the planned time of completion, briefly indicate your emotional state.

Monitoring the effectiveness of engagement

Monitoring the effectiveness of engagement, let's start by evaluating the effectiveness of forming ideas about the social role of a leader. To do this, the course has a task "project stories", it represents an element of the LMS Moodle type "forum", in which students are offered several project stories, and students can write a post with a discussion, or write their own story. The task is voluntary. The listeners reacted with interest to the task – 23 listeners (34%) wrote their stories, 26 listeners (38%) wrote posts discussing the finished stories. Moreover, some listeners wrote their own stories and posts. Thus, it can be assumed that the course participants have a "sum of expectations" about the role of the leader – the "image of the group", as shown in figure 1.

The next task evaluating the effectiveness of engagement is to identify yourself in the group. The task for this is called "self-assessment of the head". The assignment is also voluntary. The choice of self-assessment questions requires additional explanations. The learning process dictates that self-assessment questions should be based on the competencies of the supervisor. However, the competencies of the architect's educational standard are too general, such as the competence of the CC-3 cited above: "Able to carry out social interaction and realize his role in the team." The competencies of the head in professional standards are too narrow, "technical" in nature ^[15]. As a result, the author focused on the system of competencies given in the book "Competencies at work" ^[16]. This set of competencies is derived from a large amount of factual material – the authors claim to have conducted about 24,000 in-depth interviews. According to the authors, the following competencies are most important for a manager: "Impact and influence" (the ability to persuade and captivate people), "Achievement orientation", "Teamwork and cooperation", "Analytical thinking", "Initiative". Each competence has one or more severity scales. The cited work argues that for most managers, the degree of competence can be described in words: 1) calculating how certain words or actions will affect other people, 2) using various methods of direct persuasion: appealing to facts, logic. These formulations were taken as a basis in the questionnaire, translated into a five-point scale ("always", "often", "from time to time", "rarely", "never") and formulated in the first person. The summary results of the answers to the questions are shown in table 1.

Table 1

In general, the responses of the listeners show that they are listeners: a) they have formed their "sum of expectations" regarding the social role of the leader, b) they are optimistic about their competencies that could be useful to them as a leader. The greatest difficulties for listeners are caused by the competencies: "I expand the boundaries of formal authority" and the competence "I strive to set specific difficult goals." The low percentage of positive responses to competence related to the expansion of formal authority should be interpreted from the standpoint of the lack of necessary experience and capabilities. The low percentage of positive responses on competence related to setting difficult goals can be viewed from the point of view that 44% of those who answered positively represent the percentage of passionate listeners.

Motivation system

Earlier it was said that the motivation system of the course is aimed at two components: a) encouraging the completion of optional tasks, b) time management - completing the tasks of the educational topic by the right time. Time management is very important not only as a necessary quality of a leader, but also as a means to allow the listener to get the feeling that he is in control of the learning process, and not to feel like a dependent person in an unpredictable situation. From the point of view of emotional involvement, the motivation system also gives you the opportunity to feel yourself in the social role of a leader. Figure 3 shows the percentage of listeners who completed the topic assignments on time.

Figure 3 shows that the percentage of listeners completing assignments on time for each topic is quite high – about 60%. This circumstance allows us to conclude that students of the course prefer to feel themselves in the role of an active subject, managing their time and planning learning outcomes, rather than in the role of a passive learning object. Ultimately, this is also the position of a leader.

Conclusion

Returning to the issue of emotional involvement – the subject of this article – we conclude that the hypothesis that involvement in e-learning should take place in the social role for which the listener is preparing has been justified. Previously, the necessary conditions for emotional involvement in a social role were formulated. Didactic solutions and the effectiveness of the proposed solutions are demonstrated by the example of the course "project management".

The approach described in this paper can be used for other e-courses.