How to Involve Students in an Online Course: A Redesigned Online Pedagogy of Collaborative Learning and Self-Regulated Learning

In an online course, students learn independently in the virtual environment without teacher's on-the-spot support. However, many students are addicted to the Internet which is filled with a plethora of shopping websites, online games, and social networks (e.g. Facebook). To help keep students focused on and involved in online or blended courses requires teachers' exquisite design of their online teaching methods and learning activities. Thus, the author in this study redesigned his online pedagogy, collaborative learning (CL) with initiation and self-regulated learning (SRL) with feedback, based on the teaching results from previous semesters and his own self-reflection. This study involved an experiment that included 227 sophomores from four class sections. The results of this study indicate that students from CIS group (who received online CL with initiation and SRL) had the highest involvement. The implications for educators that plan to deliver online learning were also provided in this study.