‘A sense of community and camaraderie’: Increasing student engagement by supplementing an LMS with a Learning Commons Communication Tool

‘I just needed a communication aspect’

The first theme focuses on the need for a communication tool. The students felt Moodle was ‘excellent’ (Jennifer) as the primary teaching space, the central repository for ‘official’ teaching materials including resources and assessments.

However, the students did not like the Moodle forums, seeing them as only suitable for staff announcements: ‘I’ve always viewed the forums almost as like official communication’ (Rabbit). There were several interrelated reasons for this dislike of the forums. First, the 30-minute (editing) delay before a post was visible limited Moodle to asynchronous communication, making discussion slow and frustrating:

Second, the forums were seen as formal, partly because Moodle was ‘official’ and partly due to its functionality in contrast to chat feeds: ‘communicating on forums, it was sort of almost like sending an email, like very very formal’ (Ben). This formality prevented ‘casual conversation’ (Stevie) because ‘everything they posted sort of had to be perfect’ (CJ). Some students felt the same about Teams: ‘I just found it a bit more kind of cold in a way, it was just sort of very formal. . . Discord to me just felt more like a messaging service, you’re just chatting with, you know, students or friends’ (CJ).

The final perceived weakness of Moodle forums was that posts there felt more public and visible:

These limitations meant students needed another tool: ‘I just needed a communication aspect’ (Ben). However, the strengths of Moodle as the official classroom meant Discord and Teams were wanted as supplements to the LMS not replacements: ‘Discord should exist alongside [Moodle], a separation between official and unofficial stuff’ (John).

‘Build connections’

The speed and informality of the tools helped students to connect with each other, enabling quick ‘chats’, often, but not always, synchronously. These ‘organic conversations’ (Ben) potentially build stronger relationships: ‘Discord had a bit more of a connection because it felt more like a conversation’ (CJ) and may attract more students: ‘I think that Discord is much more casual, so it actually invites people who would otherwise not talk, to engage with other students’ (Stevie). The students described the tools as ‘a social space’ (Sam) and a way to ‘socialise with people’ (John). Importantly, ‘social’ included interactions related to course content.

The tools were central to the students’ learning experience. Some students kept the space open whenever they were studying: ‘Every time I switch on my computer laptop the first thing I will do is check Teams because I’m expecting messages . . . I was enjoying it’ (Eddy). Stephan described this as ‘like being inside the classroom’, a place students could ‘hangout’ (John) and talk with whoever turned up. This was particularly important for distance students (whether permanently or because of Covid):

The students also used the tools for private conversations. For example, T explained students contacted each other for support: ‘we start comparing marks and . . . if we did bad, we’d offer each other encouragement, again if we did good, we’d offer each other encouragement’. For many students, connections made in Discord within a particular course became ongoing friendships: ‘I’ve had a few friends that I met on Discord in like my first courses at [university name]’ (Sandra). Tools such as Teams and Discord help to overcome the communication challenges of studying at different times or in different time zones: ‘On Discord you can talk to them day in, day out. And some people are from Canada actually, you can just ask, they will be up at midnight, they will just answer you’ (Noku).

Particularly for online students, these connections had multiple benefits. Distance students described themselves as ‘isolated’ (Stephan) and connecting with students and staff added enjoyment, ‘bringing us together’ (Eddy). This belonging was important: ‘you kind of start to feel like, like I am a real student, I belong here, this is great’ (Stevie). And for some it was vital for success: ‘[Teams] was brilliant. I don’t think I would have made it through the semester without that, I really don’t because I was feeling so isolated’ (Beaux).

‘Free to ask the stupid questions’

The tools also improved help seeking and knowledge sharing, engagement behaviours which strengthen understanding and learning. Because of its perceived informality, Discord was particularly valued for help seeking:

As Jenny explains, students are ‘shy’ and platforms such as Discord do ‘away with that kind of stigma that students feel when they would ask questions on [Moodle]’. This reluctance to seek help publicly also happens in physical classrooms so campus-based students also benefit: ‘I don’t take part in class discussions . . . I either ask questions of the lecturers via email or in the case of the Maths Discord I might engage on that’ (Amy).

Both students and staff were valued sources of help: ‘You could just ask anything, anyone can reply, even if the lecturer is not around, other students can reply’ (Noku). The students valued staff involvement: ‘being able to ask questions directly to the lecturers and actually feel like they’re so much more engaged with you, instead of a group of 300 students in a lecture hall’ (Stevie). Stephan talked about getting an immediate response to a question from a tutor, saying this showed they were ‘somebody that cares’ which made him ‘feel good to be part of the class’. Staff presence also ensured responses were accurate, ‘not something totally wild and crazy that’s completely wrong’ (Sandra), and that students were ‘behaving themselves’ (Amy). For some students, the anonymity of Discord was valued: ‘I think that maybe is what encourages people to ask questions . . . they can be kind of anonymous if they want to be’ (Kate), as was the ability to set up private channels ‘for people who felt a bit dumb asking a question where a lecturer could see and might feel judged’ (CJ).

Students working collaboratively on assessments found these tools vital: ‘Because we’re all studying from different locations . . . so, we have to sort of coordinate what we’re all going to do and discuss it that way. And so, we find it easiest to do that by Discord’ (Amy). Teams’ broader functionality, with file sharing and class notebooks for example, was particularly valued for group tasks.

Easier help seeking and knowledge sharing led to improved student learning: ‘[Discord] helps me understand concepts more easily. Students are always sharing notes and ideas and concepts and everyone’s always willing to help, so it’s all just there’ (Jennifer). Students could quickly access guidance if they were stuck while working on a task:

Students also learned from each other’s questions, searching for answers: ‘It was really easy to kind of search . . . quite often I found that other students had already kind of asked and received answers’ (Kate). Helping other students was also useful for learning: ‘helping other people will sort of ingrain into your brain a bit more when you’re able to explain it’ (CJ). Finally, visible help seeking helps students feel better about their own struggles: ‘when I see on the [university name] Discord, you know, people asking questions about what they don’t understand, and it’s sort of like, well I’m not the only one who doesn’t understand everything about this and that can definitely help’ (Amy).

‘Communicate with everyone else’

A key strength of Discord was that it sat outside the institutional space with channels open to all. This enabled students to build relationships, seek help, and share knowledge beyond the temporal and practical bounds of the course and even the institution. As Stephan explains, even if Moodle had a better chat facility ‘you’d be restricted to that [course] . . . the real benefits that are found with Discord are, if I’m part of the channels, I can still communicate with everyone else’.

This was particularly valuable for distance students giving them ‘a sense of community and camaraderie that on-campus students would have’ (Dixie). The students could stay connected with students from their courses, seek advice on their future course choices, and engage in discussion on disciplinary or industry topics.

Students also appreciated the opportunity to get course content and skills advice from more experienced students: ‘I can talk to someone who’s taking like a level up, right, and then they can help me with my work if I need it’ (Rabbit). Stephan was quick to explain this was not cheating: ‘They helped me along with it. They won’t give me the answers, lecturers are also in the Discord server, so we definitely don’t do that. But it’s awesome to just ask somebody’.

Having connected initially through the institutionally created channels in Discord, students could set up their own communities to connect across friendship or disciplinary interest lines:

This example highlights the multiple benefits of this extended communication between students: friendship, support, learning, and enjoyment. It is an organic, student centred and student-controlled learning community.

‘I’m not really into that’

Not all students used the tools. Usage was influenced by a tool’s functionality, student preferences, and the staff. Tools excelled at different tasks with Discord being better for quick informal communication and Teams better for sustained group work. Student familiarity with a tool was also important. Many students already used Discord: ‘using it for university is just easy for me, it’s something that I have open and I’m regularly checking anyway’ (Amy). For others, there could be a steep learning curve: ‘There was definitely a few barriers to use. At the beginning, not knowing how servers, and chats, and voice chats work. . . can be quite daunting’ (Rabbit).

Not all students valued the informality of Discord, seeing it as ‘social media’ (Eddy) and distracting from their learning: ‘I like Teams because I think it’s very clean for teaching and learning purposes. It’s no distraction as compared to Discord’ (Lily). Beaux tried Discord but didn’t like it: ‘It really did feel like I was walking into like a school pub. . . it’s social and it’s just very busy . . . I don’t like it’. Relatedly, students differed in how much interaction they wanted with other students: ‘the regulars talk about different stuff every day, I’m not really into that. I can just go when I want to ask’ (Noku).

Finally, staff were an important influence including how they set up the tool: ‘Teams [in one course] wasn’t implemented that well and it was higgledy piggledy’ (Beaux). Clear instructions were also important as Ben explains: ‘It was just use it, that was just something we had to work out. Yeah, I heard a lot of people were very confused’ (Ben). As well, as mentioned earlier, staff involvement encouraged students to use the tool.

Student engagement

The communication tools fostered all three dimensions of student engagement: increasing behavioural engagement by giving students ways to work collaboratively and participate more fully in a virtual classroom; supporting emotional engagement through building connections with students and staff leading to increased interest and enjoyment; and facilitating cognitive engagement by enabling help seeking and knowledge sharing leading to deeper learning.

The findings also illustrate how easier communication with staff and other students fostered engagement via the pathways to engagement. An increased sense of belonging, to the course itself and the wider discipline, was most evident, aligning with other studies which have found that interaction and relationships foster belonging (Kahu and Picton, 2019; Maunder, 2018; Picton et al., 2017). Our findings support McInnerney and Roberts (2004) who argue that greater use of synchronous communication tools is necessary to effectively build community in online spaces. However, students often choose online learning because it frees them to study whenever they like and synchronous communication risks eroding that flexibility. For some students this may reduce rather than increase interaction. Tools such as Discord and Teams resolve this tension by enabling students to choose when they communicate synchronously or asynchronously.

Using the tools positively impacted students’ wellbeing. Students in Baik et al.’s (2019) survey felt their wellbeing would be improved if staff were more approachable and worked to facilitate more interactions with them and other students. The communication tools achieved both those goals for the students in the current study. It was easier to seek help and to communicate with both staff and other students leading to enjoyment and an improved sense of wellbeing.

How much students used the tools varied, ranging from those who were highly involved, ‘hanging out’ in Teams or Discord, wanting to be part of a community, through to those who just dropped in when they needed something. This parallels White and Le Cornu’s (2017) work which conceptualises people’s preferred ways of engaging in digital places across a continuum from ‘resident’ to ‘visitor’. The context is important – an individual may choose to be a resident in one digital place and a visitor in another. As the framework of student engagement highlights, many factors impact on student engagement and our findings suggest familiarity with the tool and individual preferences are critical influences on tool usage. Course design and staff involvement are important institutional influences. The tools are more important for online students, however, as with Mtshali et al.’s (2015) findings, those who study in blended or mixed modes also benefit, particularly students who find it challenging to participate in a classroom.

Help seeking

Help seeking is a self-regulation strategy that is beneficial for learning (Cheng et al., 2013) and our findings suggest communication tools facilitate this important process. Online learners are less likely to use help seeking and peer learning as self-regulated learning strategies (Broadbent, 2017). However, Broadbent and Lodge (2021) found students in both online and blended modes of study used a live chat tool offering synchronous communication between a student and teacher during assigned ‘office hours’. They concluded: ‘with the right tool online students do embrace online help-seeking strategies’ (p. 16). Our research supports this conclusion, illustrating the particular value of tools which encourage students to post questions to the whole class rather than just the lecturer.

Micari and Calkins (2021) outline the importance of instructor behaviour for encouraging students to ask questions in classroom settings. Our findings highlight that when and how students ask for help online is influenced by the perceived norms of the space. As Mann (2005) argues, any encounter between teachers and learners is ‘governed by social, linguistic, and discoursal norms’ (p. 49) which are usually implicit. Our findings emphasise one of the factors influencing those norms in the digital world is the affordances and functionality of the tool. Similar to students in Konstantinou and Epps’ (2017) research, Discord was seen as more ‘laid back’ and this encouraged help seeking. An additional insight is that students perceived posts in Discord as less visible than LMS forum posts which added to the sense that asking a question there is less threatening. With Discord, the help seeking and peer learning benefits extended beyond course boundaries due to the active participation of alumni and wider discussions of the discipline areas. The perception of informality stopped some students from participating, not wanting ‘social’ interaction to distract their learning. This is arguably unfortunate as students asking questions in a group space has multiple benefits: it creates a sense of community, students learn from each other, and staff are freed from answering the same question multiples times.

Informal spaces

Given the importance of perceived norms in digital spaces observed in the current study, it is useful to draw a parallel with learning commons as informal physical learning spaces. Typically housed in university libraries, such spaces tend to be comfortable, flexible, and well resourced, aimed at encouraging students to spend time on campus, connect, and collaborate. Library and support staff are there to help students. Learning commons encourage intentional learning that ‘occurs when learners are engaged and interested in acts of learning’ (Johnson and Khoo, 2018: 114).

The communication space offered in the current study acted as a virtual equivalent of the physical learning commons. Students can enter the space to connect with peers or seek assistance from teaching staff. They can just be in the space, observe, listen, feel part of a study community – ‘residents’ of that space (White and Le Cornu, 2017). This provides support similar to physical learning commons for students who cannot be on campus.

Berman (2020) makes the point that directly measuring learning outcomes stemming from informal learning spaces is not possible and so suggests exploring how these spaces foster belonging as a positive impact on the student experience. This aligns with the current study which shows that student belonging and wellbeing are improved by digital learning commons spaces and these act as pathways to engagement and learning. The increase in help seeking is also a notable benefit. Berman (2020) asks if truly informal spaces can exist within institutional settings, and if staff presence points to a more formal environment. Our findings suggest this may not be the case in digital spaces. The students described the digital spaces created by Discord as social and informal (Teams was seen as semi-formal); staff did not appear to inhibit that sense of informality and their presence was important for ensuring interactions were positive and appropriate. As Berman (2020) states, ‘‘informal’ does not mean ‘normless’’ (p. 135). The digital space potentially enables a blurring of formal/informal, social/academic more easily than physical learning spaces.

Digital spaces offer other opportunities. Berman (2020) criticises the literature for reporting informal spaces fostering belonging without looking at how these spaces might exclude individuals such as mature-aged students or students with disabilities. We suggest that digital environments may provide opportunities for inclusion, in part because identity markers are less visible. An additional benefit of the digital spaces created in the current study was the control students had over communication parameters allowing them to choose between asynchronous and synchronous and between video and text dependent on their needs and preferences.

Learning Commons Communication Tools (LCCT)

In the previous section we have established parallels between the virtual communication spaces explored in our study and on-campus learning commons. The following key points highlight the characteristics of the online learning commons:

Coining the term, Learning Commons Communication Tools (LCCT), focusses the conversation on tool characteristics. We found both Discord and Teams suitable as LCCT when used in conjunction with Moodle. Based on the characteristics we have established, the fit of other tools can be examined. This is important in an environment rich with generic terms that encompass tools with useful characteristics but only a partial match for higher education learning needs.

We suggest that support for online learning commons requires a shift from full institutional control, as established in institutional LMS, to sharing power with the members of the wider learning community, as shown in Discord and to a lesser extent in Teams. We discuss these points in an upcoming publication (Heinrich et al., 2022).