The use of VoiceThread as a multimodal digital platform to foster online students’ task engagement, communication and online community building

Abstract

Offering online courses as a pathway to higher education degrees is growing worldwide, including Australia (Greenland & Moore, 2014; Open Universities Australia [OUA], 2018). This rapid growth is undergirded by the profound influence of globalization and economic potential of online instruction (Rovai & Downey, 2010). Distance education is more cost-effective (Reiach, Averbeck & Cassidy, 2012) and offers more flexibility and accessibility (Anderson, 2010; Evans & Pauling, 2010) as students and instructors are not restricted by their physical location and can participate anytime and from anywhere (Kresevic, Burant, Denton, Heath & Kypriotakis, 2011). In addition, the use of mobile phones, tablets and multimedia in course delivery may provide a competitive edge by making online courses more aligned with the learning styles of modern students who feel comfortable with small screens, daily engaging in “producing, commenting, sharing and classifying [their] own content” (Evans & Pauling, 2010, p. 207).

Open Universities Australia (OUA) developed a centralized platform that provides access to fully online courses and units run by partner Australian universities. In 2017 alone, it had over thirty-four thousand enrolled students from seventy-two countries (OUA, 2018), thus becoming ←175 | 176→the largest provider of online higher education in Australia (Moore & Greenland, 2017). As highlighted in the recent Universities Australia Keep It Clever Policy Statement, “for Australia, meeting this era of change with confidence and skill requires a university system that is responsive, flexible and agile” (Universities Australia, 2016, p....