STRENGTHENING RESEARCH PEDAGOGY: STUDENT’S ONLINE RESEARCH EXPERIENCES, CHALLENGES, AND EFFECTIVE TEACHING STRATEGIES

Given the growing trend of delivering classes through online and virtual environments, it is vital to gain a nuanced understanding of students' online research learning experiences, the factors that contributed to their choice of learning modality, the challenges they encountered, and the effective online research teaching practices and strategies that supported them in completing the course. Although some studies have looked into this area, there is limited literature on research courses conducted online. Thus, this study attempts to fill that gap. Using a mixed-methods approach, the results revealed that overall, there is a significant difference in the projected performance of 204 asynchronous students compared to their actual achievement. Likewise, a significant difference is also evident in the projected performance of the 67 synchronous students compared to their actual achievement. Furthermore, it is of note that the synchronous students projected higher performance and actually attained better marks, with a significant difference in actual achievement compared to their asynchronous counterparts. Analysis of qualitative data also revealed factors that influenced the disparity, including internet connection issues, communication challenges, learning environment, time management, and group dynamics. Additionally, effective teaching practices that facilitated the completion of collaborative research projects include clarity of learning materials, reasonable deadlines, teacher support and understanding, availability for consultation and feedback, and interactive and engaging teaching methods. Consequently, these results can be used to inform and improve research teaching practices, learning materials design, and assessment tool development. More significantly, it may be used as the basis for institutional policies about online research learning.