Impact of Online Collaborative Problem-based Learning on the Engagement of Year-One Engineering Undergraduates

Engagement is an essential concept reflecting students' attitudes and performance in learning activities. Particularly after the outbreak of COVID-19, enhancing learning engagement in the online educational context has become a prominent concern. Effective educational approaches and technology have been combined and applied to improve online education. This quasi-experimental research aimed to explore whether online collaborative problem-based learning (PBL) impacts the engagement of year-one engineering undergraduates in a physics experiment course at a university in Mainland China. 107 students participated in the study, with 52 students assigned to the control group and the remaining to the experimental group. Students in the experimental group participated in PBL activities using online collaborative documents and an online learning platform called Padlet. The Online Student Engagement Questionnaire, measuring engagement across four dimensions, including behavioral, cognitive, affective, and social engagement, was utilized in the pre-tests and post-tests to examine whether online collaborative PBL impacts the engagement of year-one engineering students. The ANOVA results showed significant differences in students' overall engagement as well as cognitive, affective, and social engagement between the experimental group and control group in the post-test and implied that year-one engineering undergraduates' overall engagement and three dimensions of engagement can be enhanced in the educational settings of online collaborative problem-based learning though this did not work with behavioral engagement. Using qualitative approaches, how online collaborative problem-based learning impacted the engagement of year-one undergraduates was investigated deeper in the second phase of this research project, and the findings will be presented in another paper.