“Nervous”, “anxious”, “excited”, and “not sure what to expect” are feelings expressed by nearly all of my peers on this course when asked to describe how they felt becoming a student again and joining an online course.
These emotions would be true of anyone starting University in a face-to-face context but need to be managed more deliberately in online course design where students are experiencing them in relative isolation. One benefit of online learning is increased access to education by those who may not have been able to attend more ‘traditional’ education due to work, family or other life commitments, but this has led to an increasingly diverse student cohort. (Biggs, Tang and Kennedy, 2022, p.5)
In ‘Preparing for Blended e-Learning’ Littlejohn and Pegler talk of the need to create “new etiquettes of learning” and we cannot expect students to know what these etiquettes are intuitively. As well as designing learning for specific subjects institutions need to teach students how to be successful students. The University of Illinois has distilled down a pretty good list of “What Makes A Successful Online Student” and their comment that…
The online learning process is normally accelerated and requires commitment on the student’s part. Staying up with the class and completing all work on time is vital. Once a student gets behind, it is almost impossible to catch up. Basically, the student needs to want to be there, and needs to want the experience.
(Illinois Online Network, 2007)
..reinforces the argument made by Stien and Graham that “blended courses put more responsibility for learning on the students” (Stein and Graham, 2020)
Interlocking the CEG pedagogic framework for teaching specific topics, with Gilly Salmon’s five-stage model for mapping those teachings into a longer-term framework that encourages the students to become autonomous and engaged learners is the ideal aim but in practice, things may never be perfect.
Each cohort of students will bring new characters and behaviours. In my own experience, I have seen identically planned webinars yield entirely different learning experiences simply due to the nature of the students that turned up at a given time.
Problematic behaviours do need to be addressed and VLE’s offer a much greater ability to monitor student behaviour and interaction than traditional learning environments. Course peer Julian emphasised the importance of 1-2-1 sessions with students in order to address, and maybe correct, individual behaviours or concerns (Hagley, 2023). Having these sessions built into the course design as standard, rather than just used as an ad-hoc intervention can make sure all students are given time to reflect on where they are at key moments in a course and not feel singled out.
Reference list
Biggs, J., Tang, C. and Kennedy, G. (2022). Teaching for Quality Learning at University 5e. Open University Press, p.5.
Hagley, J. (2023). Week 11: Forum – Share Your Strategies for Dealing with Challenging Situations with Online Learners. [online] flex.falmouth.ac.uk. Available at: https://flex.falmouth.ac.uk/courses/1154/discussion_topics/28603?module_item_id=65440.
Illinois Online Network (2007). What Makes a Successful Online Student? | University of Illinois Springfield. [online] www.uis.edu. Available at: https://www.uis.edu/ion/resources/tutorials/pedagogy/successful-online-student.
Stein, J. and Graham, C.R. (2020). Essentials for Blended Learning, 2nd Edition. Routledge.