Exploring triggers for arousing interest in the online learning

Teachers and educators in different domains and educational levels attempt to motivate and engage students through learning and interaction. Teachers and educators often think that students either have interest or not, but they might not recognize that interest can be aroused by features of environments, by designing an array of teaching and learning and by different activities. The aim of this research is to explore the significant triggers among higher education students (n=74) in a socio-digital environment. The data consists of students’ online discussion posts (N=68), group discussion syntheses (N=10), and essays (N=21). The content analysis identified significant triggers, and categories were clustered. The results show that the most significant triggers are collaboration, topic, and feedback. The results reveal a new understanding for a collaborative learning framework. Findings from the present study suggest that teachers and educators in different domains and levels need to pay more attention to triggers in collaborative learning, particularly in socio-digital contexts.