Profiles of Student Engagement in Synchronous and Asynchronous Science Instruction

Virtual instruction at the K-12 level is on the rise, yet we know very little about the ways students engage in different types of virtual instruction. The goals of this study were to: 1) describe high school students’ engagement in virtual science courses in terms of behavioral, affective, cognitive-value, and cognitive-self regulatory dimensions; 2) explore whether students’ engagement patterns across these dimensions differed depending on whether science activities were synchronous or asynchronous; and 3) examine whether these engagement patterns were associated with students’ final course grades or over-summer retention in a virtual high school. Students enrolled in a range of science courses at virtual high school (n=124) provided multiple reports (n=493) of their engagement during both synchronous and asynchronous learning activities. Latent Profile Analysis (LPA) conducted with these data suggested five distinct situational engagement profiles representing different constellations of the affective, behavioral, cognitive-value, and cognitive-self-regulatory dimensions of engagement. During synchronous instruction, students tended to engage in ways characterized by higher engagement in all dimensions compared with asynchronous instruction. These high engagement profiles were also associated with higher final course grades. There were few differences in the extent to which profiles predicted retention; however, lower self-regulation was associated with higher rates of retention.