In the state development strategy of Russia, the most important goals of education modernization are the maximum development of the intellectual potential of an individual, analytical skills, critical thinking, the development of self-analysis skills and awareness of one’s own capabilities, creative ability, initiative with a sense of responsibility for one’s actions, and interpersonal skills [
1]. There are new directions in the educational processes of modern universities, which is justified by the need for graduates of educational institutions who speak several foreign languages as part of everyday communication [
2]. Thus, in the professional sphere [
3] one of the priority areas is the introduction and use of information and communication technologies. New informational conditions contribute to the discovery of new ways to improve the quality of the educational process [
4]. To achieve these goals, it is necessary to use such technologies of the educational process, which contribute to the development of students’ independence, their ability to work, taking into account the individual ways of developing educational material, the development of communicative creativity of students and the development of personal motivations [
5].
The first stage of the course was elaborated on the basis of the Moodle educational platform, and the access to preparatory materials was open for students the week before the second stage. All information on the assessment was transmitted to the Course Coordinators’ (CCs’) accounts. The second stage was a face-to-face classroom, which was adapted to the students’ knowledge of initial professional discipline and included more or fewer discussions if the level of students’ confidence in the material was higher or lower, respectively. The third stage was based on the online international X-culture project for students who study International Business, International Management or International Marketing. This project has already proved its efficiency in different countries.
Such an educational model was introduced into the curricula of 4th year undergraduate students in Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University in the fall semester (International Business course). Research question of this paper is following: is there a significant influence of students’ engagement on students’ learning outcomes in such a course based on an integrated approach?
Theoretical Background
Khalyapina [
7] analyzed existing Russian education approaches to teaching foreign languages based on CLIL. This analysis showed that the introduction of integrated learning models is promising, but it is necessary to take into account the peculiarities of each university and curriculum. Another study [
8] showed that blended learning has become one of the most important components for the successful implementation of integrated approaches to learning, since it forms the basis of the entire learning process.
An important value for teaching students in a blended environment is engagement. Fredricks and McColskey [
9] noted that although some researchers define it in terms of beliefs and values about the importance of learning, others define it as putting forth effort above and beyond the required minimum.
Based on an analysis of publications in blended learning, Halverson et al. [
10] found that about half of their publications mentioned the term “engagement”. Their results also showed that, despite the popular use of this term, in very rare cases, research directly involved participation in blended learning.
Some scientists theorized a multidimensional model of engagement [
11,
12,
13]. According to this theoretical model, engagement is multifaceted, which may include behavioral, emotional, and cognitive aspects [
9,
14]. According to Fredicks et al. [
12], behavioral engagement emphasizes participation, perseverance, and involvement in academic activities. Emotional engagement focuses on positive and negative reactions to peers, teachers, and schools, as well as evaluation of learning outcomes. From the point of view of cognitive interaction, it includes the student’s contribution to the effort to understand the topic. “Cognitive engagement draws on the idea of investment; it incorporates thoughtfulness and willingness to exert the effort necessary to comprehend complex ideas and master difficult skills” [
12] (p. 73).
Study engagement predicts various long-term positive outcomes, such as a desire for higher education, consistency in educational ways, better employment opportunities, positive self-perception and well-being, and less depressive symptoms [
15,
16,
17,
18,
19]. Thus, engagement can have positive, far-reaching consequences even outside the educational context. In addition, it was found that engagement in learning activities is significantly related to academic motivation and functioning: students evaluate their studies, get higher marks and report lower levels of academic abstinence and work evasion [
18].
Researchers have recently pointed out the need for using diverse tools to measure engagement [
20,
21], which leads to this mixed methods study that investigated engagement using a variety of data sources to reflect behavioral, emotional, and cognitive engagement [
22]. There are various approaches to measuring engagement, including student self-reports, journal files, and interviews. The advantages of self-reporting are that they are easy to implement at low cost [
23], they can evaluate constructs that are not directly observed by researchers [
24], and prevent disruption of the classroom’s learning process [
14]. However, self-assessment measures fail to capture the engagement process [
24]. Compared to subjective indicators, log files from electronic learning management systems can provide more objective and contextual information, for example, how many times a student will enter the system. Although researchers focused on log files for various purposes, they rarely used these files to study engagement. Only recently, Gobert, Baker, and Wickson [
20] have developed algorithms to detect engagement in an online research environment for researching scientific inquiries. Therefore, other approaches, such as interviews, have their advantages. Researchers can use the interview technique to obtain detailed information about why students do or do not participate in certain activities, why students differ in interaction behavior and contextual factors that can lead to the engagement or disengagement of students [
9]. Taking into account the fact that each approach to measurement has its pros and cons, a number of researchers have recommended using several methods to measure engagement [
9,
20,
21].
Suárez et al. [
25] provided a study of student homework engagement that is classified as behavioral engagement. Behavioral engagement, in terms of time, effort, amount of homework done, perseverance, and dedication [
26] should have an impact on adolescent academic performance [
27]. Suárez et al. [
25] propose a structural model in which behavioral engagement in homework mediates between the student’s specific motivational conditions—the student’s motivational conditions and their general academic achievements.
Although among other factors, academic performance may depend on the age of students, the quality of assigned homework, and the procedure used to measure performance, research tends to maintain a positive relationship between work performed and academic achievement [
28,
29,
30,
31,
32,
33,
34]. Some studies have found positive relationships [
29,
30,
33,
35], and some studies have shown that time spent on homework and achievements may not be related or even negatively related [
32,
36,
37].
Another study [
37] examined the emotional engagement of first-year students and its relationship with second-year experience. As a result, Ketonen et al. [
38] argued that a higher level of engagement in learning at the beginning of studies also reinforced positive intrapersonal relations between perceived value (which is defined as the importance of the activity as a whole) and positive emotions in the second academic year in addition to the additive effect at the level of positive emotions.
In the current study we would like to share the experience and to fill the existing research gap using a mixed methods approach to take into account both students’ engagement and learning outcomes in a blended environment.