English abstract
The value of learning arises through the utilization of the acquired knowledge for the
benefit of oneself and others. Hence, students are expected to be engaged in their communities,
sharing and devoting their knowledge to the growth and prosperity of it and ultimately, the
whole nation. Hereat, service-learning has been used as an effective pedagogy to link students’
learning experiences to their community. The aim of this study was to develop an Online
Service-Learning Community (OSLC) to promote General Foundation Program (GFP) Level
One students’ engagement in the community.
The OSLC was developed on Padlet, wherein the student participants followed Design
Thinking (DT) approach to create an Ecology of Resources (EoR) as a part of a Type II (Hybrid)
E-Service-Learning intervention. The OSLC mainly encompassed informative resources about
the college and course-based learning activities, which were created according to the
community needs. This study is Design-Based Research (DBR). The sample of the study
consisted of 26 GFP Level One students, who took English language skills courses and
mathematics during the second semester of the Academic Year 2022/2023 in GFP at Al Buraimi
University College (BUC) in Oman. The sample also included 11 GFP instructors from BUC.
Data were collected through students’ artifacts, online structured questionnaires, semi structured interviews and focus group. The collected quantitative data were analyzed using
SPSS program, while the qualitative data were analyzed thematically.
In view of the findings, the study suggested an effective design (the OSLC) that can be
transferable for application to other higher education learning contexts. This is along with other
effective rubrics and design principles, such as the OSLC as an eLearing Tool Evaluation
Questionnaire, Reflection Questionnaire, and the OSLC (Design Thinking Process)
Development Guide. The study findings also indicated the effectiveness of OSLC in increasing
the GFP Level One students’ tendency toward community engagement.
The study offers three major recommendations as follows: (1) maturing the OSLC design,
(2) give more emphasis to reflection and reflective practices, and (3) disseminate the study
findings to close the SoTL’s 4M Framework loop. As per the study implications, it
encompasses abundance of valuable information, which was yielded through literature review
and bibliometric analysis. It includes major aspects related to community engagement and e-service-learning (Type II (Hybrid) E-Service Learning and Extreme E-Service Learning (XESL)). It is also an exemplar to showcase how to construct a multi-phase DBR study for an e-service-learning intervention. Hence, in conclusion, this study can be a prominent addition to
literature and open up more opportunities for further research.
