Students' distress with a web-based distance education course: An ethnographic study of participants' experiences
[Summary of paper by Noriko Hara & Rob Kling, 2000. http://www.slis.indiana.edu/ CSI/Wp/wp00-01B.html]
Material for students, administrators and instructors largely project only the positive side of online learning. There are a few studies of online courses, which report specific problems with online learning scenarios such as feeling of isolation, technology problems, etc. But these are too few and often appear in specialised journals, where it goes un-noticed by the practitioners in the field.
The paper reports on an ethnographic study conducted during a graduate course in educational technology at a US university. The course was offered in purely online mode and had 6 participants who participated in the
study. The course was taught by a PhD student who had prior teaching experience and was familiar with the subject matter, but was new to teaching in online classes.
The study used observation of the students during online sessions, personal direct interviews with the students, and study of notes etc made by the instructor and students. Though the small class-size dims the impact of the study, in terms of the conclusions that can be drawn from the study, given the dearth of such studies, the report generated a lot of interest and debate. Moreover, rather than drawing statistical inferences, the paper's observations and conclusions are qualitative in nature.
One of the major 'distress' factors observed during the study was technological difficulty - with connectivity, usage of commands for software packages, etc. The teacher not being adequately careful to word assignments and related messages clearly led to much distress, particularly when students sit down to work on these late at night when there is no help available to clarify such problems. The course relied heavily on use of e-mail and also included an assessment component based on e-mails sent by the students. However, mostly students are not used to handling large e-mail volumes on a regular basis - this led to accumulation of messages, delayed and outdated responses, etc.
Routine communication through electronic media requires methodologies to substitute the non-verbal (physical) cues in face-to-face human communications. Without proper protocols, electronic communication via mail and chat are not fluent and leads to much confusion. Interactions in environments such as Chat and MOO require familiarity with the environment and the interaction style. Directly exposing students to such environments leads to much frustration. These arose partly from the inability to get the desired response from the system, and more importantly from the multiple overlapping conversations that take place giving the feel of too high a pace and making it difficult to follow the threads coherently.
The authors did not find any sign of feeling of isolation among these students, perhaps due to the small class size, which enabled the students to quickly get to know each other.
The authors find that the expectations from the students' side are often difficult to match in practice. An "any time" course cannot mean the faculty being available "all the time" answering questions.
Expectations must be set and defined regarding reasonable response times. Care must be taken by teachers to minimise the need for clarifications and questions, by being careful in posting messages. Communication protocols equivalent to the physical cues of human communication need to be evolved. They also caution that whether face-to-face or online, high quality education cannot be cheap or easy.
There is a clear need for further studies in this direction, and also to ensure that the relevant lessons are fed back into the training/guidance material used for online learning.