«Virtually educated: Student perspectives on the distance learning experience»

Virtually Educated: Student Perspectives on the Distance Learning Experience Timothy McGettigan Department of Sociology Wake Forest University Abstract Distance learning technology has a tendency to sustain a variety of barriers that can often cause distant students to feel like “second class” members of the academic community. Furthermore, the same barriers can also serve to generate very positive evaluation data, when, in fact, a high percentage of distant students may be exceedingly dissatisfied with their education. As a result, many of the distant students with whom I spoke suggested that distance education would never be able to match the kind of “real” learning that is only available in traditional classroom contexts. Introduction Trying to get a rapport going with DETS teachers is almost like trying to get a rapport going with your TV. (Interview transcription) Educational quality is an issue that is raised constantly in the discussion of distance learning. Fortunately, in recent years there has been a growing emphasis upon student perspectives relative to the quality of distance education (Biner, 1993; Biner and Dean, 1995; Biner, et al., 1997; Viverais-Dresler and Kutschke, 1992; Miller and Husmann, 1994; Thomerson and Smith, 1996). In part, this concern has been stimulated by a “consumerist” model of education (Morgan and Morris, 1994, p. 22; Stevenson, et al., 1997, p. 54). That is, many institutions of higher learning have been endeavoring to expand the education “market” and, thus, are intent upon appealing to a broader range of potential “customers.” Despite the recent interest in student perspectives on the distance learning experience, it is it still likely that many of the unique concerns of distant students will remain overlooked. Regardless of the good intentions of student evaluations, particularly in the case of distant students, such measures of student satisfaction can often be misleading at best. Indeed, this was precisely the state of affairs that I encountered when I began teaching at a distance learning institution, Big State University-Branch. I have chosen not to disclose the name of this institution in order to avoid delivering an indictment of one particular distance education program. Instead, my goal is to focus upon an analysis of the perceived deficiencies of distance education that have been voiced by a group of distant students. Whereas the pervasive impression of instructors at the main campus of Big State University was that the students at BSU-Branch were all thoroughly satisfied with the quality of instruction transmitted from the main campus, I encountered a much different set of prevailing attitudes at the branch campus. In many cases, BSU-Branch students were, to say the least, extremely dissatisfied with their distance education experience. However, due to their marginality, not only were the BSU-Branch students unsuccessful in apprising instructors of their disappointment, but—as a result of a variety of quirks in the distance learning system—these disgruntled students often transmitted the impression that they were pleased with their distance learning courses. Because I represented a “live” presence at the branch campus, many students who had not previously had an opportunity to interact with a “real” sociology professor, flocked to both my classes and office hours. Indeed, as I report in this paper, many of these students brought a wide variety of pressing concerns to my attention that they simply would not discuss with their “virtual” professors. While the BSU-Branch students generally had significant misgivings about the quality of their learning experience, their spatial dislocation from professors and administrators shrouded their displeasure. At the same time, because of the severity of the students’ umbrage with their virtual courses, the most dissatisfied students did not fill out course evaluation forms—usually because they had dropped out of unsatisfactory courses long before the time for evaluations arrived. As a result, it was usually the students who were “survivors,” and who were more satisfied with their distance courses, who hung around long enough to provide evaluation data. Thus, such evaluation data tended to be extremely skewed, i.e., the data provided a preponderance of evidence that indicated students were delighted with their courses. Consequently, it was not until I held sustained, non-virtual interactions with the students at BSU-Branch that I discovered any hint of student discontent. Not only had their distance education system failed to provide a “first rate” education, but various bugs in the system had also whitewashed BSU-Branch students’ negative attitudes toward distance learning. Thus, students at BSU-Branch maintained that, unless professors could get more in touch with their distant students, it would never be possible for distance education to provide anything better than a second rate education. The Pros and Cons of Distance Learning During the 1995-6 academic year, I taught sociology for two semesters at Big State University-Branch, a distance learning institution. BSU-Branch is a relatively small school: it has approximately 30-40 full time, on site faculty and serves approximately 3,000 students. Many of the students who attend BSU-Branch are non-traditional in the sense that they do not live on campus and they are often older (29.5 years old on average) than the typical undergraduate. In addition, the students at BSU-Branch tend to be “place-bound”; they often have career and family obligations that do not allow them to travel great distances in order to attend college. While one might guess that the educational opportunities at BSU-Branch might be somewhat limited, in fact, BSU-Branch offers an impressive variety of both undergraduate and graduate degree programs. BSU-Branch can offer such a wide range of programs because it is both a receiving and transmission station for a sophisticated distance education system, the Distant Education Technology System (DETS). DETS is a technology-intensive educational broadcasting system that facilitates distance learning through the use of video cameras, television monitors, microphones and fax machines. Consequently, with the help of DETS it is possible for isolated, relatively small institutions—like BSU-Branch—to act as receiving stations for an almost unlimited variety of educational opportunities. While DETS technology might open up otherwise unobtainable educational opportunities, nevertheless, BSU-Branch students still harbored significant concerns about the relative quality of their education: Would they be able to learn in virtual classrooms? Would they be able to overcome the “distance” between themselves and their professors? Could teachers who were facilitating classes for scores or hundreds of students become spread too thin to provide an adequate—much less a quality—learning experience? Generally speaking, students at BSU-Branch were appreciative of the valuable opportunities made available by DETS. However, they also reported misgivings that, while similar in many ways to routine grievances from traditional students, point to a variety of deficiencies that reduce distance education, perhaps irremediably, to a second class learning experience. Teaching and Doing Sociology in a Distance Learning Context The role that I played at BSU-Branch was as a limited-term sociology professor. In the 1995-6 academic year, I held a one-year Visiting Assistant Professorship at BSU-Branch while a search was conducted to fill the position permanently. My presence at BSU-Branch provided many students with their first opportunity to take sociology classes from a “live body.” In addition, a substantial number of students flocked to my office hours on a routine basis—more often than not, in order to voice misgivings with DETS. Although I assured these students that their comments and criticisms would be better directed toward their DETS instructors, the students maintained that my “real” presence offered a more comfortable and convenient avenue through which to vent their grievances. In fact, I was surprised by the number and severity of concerns that students voiced in relation to DETS. My only previous exposure to DETS had been as an interested, but uninvolved observer from the main BSU campus. The nearly universal sentiments of DETS instructors were that the branch campus students were more capable, attentive, prepared and enthusiastic than their counterparts at the main campus. This is a phenomenon that has been noted by other investigators (Biner, et al., 1997) and stands in stark contrast with the assertion that distance learners are less able to excel academically (Miller, et al., 1993, p. 55). Thus, given the widespread and positive sentiments regarding BSU-Branch students, I was genuinely surprised to encounter the myriad of frustrations voiced by the branch campus students. During the course of our interactions, BSU-Branch students recited a laundry list of concerns that plagued their academic lives as a consequence of learning through DETS. The following is a short list of their most significant concerns: Grumpy, unsympathetic professors Being treated like second class students Lack of training for DETS instructors I will elaborate upon the nature of each of these concerns by drawing upon my interviews, office discussions, and in-class interactions with the students at BSU-Branch. Grumpy, Unsympathetic Professors Of course, it is not only distant students who can been heard to complain about their professors. However, the students at BSU-Branch were convinced that the shortcomings of “bad” teachers were magnified enormously over DETS. Whereas there was a widespread perception at BSU-Branch that “good” teachers could overcome many of the obstacles that prevented effective student-teacher interaction over DETS—in part by insuring that all of their students could “claim some ownership to at least the process, if not the content, of instruction” (Miller and Husmann, 1994, p. 109)—BSU-Branch students felt that the added challenges of teaching over DETS were bound to bring out the worst in “bad” teachers. As a means of illustrating the propensity that DETS had to bring out the worst in some teachers, I will describe the responses of students to two separate courses that were broadcast from the main campus during my stay at BSU-Branch. EXAMPLE 1: In the fall of 1995 a course in Comparative Sociology The titles of all courses and names of professors have been altered intentionally. was offered over DETS by the Department of Sociology at Big State University. The course was taught by Dr. Adams, a tenured professor who, despite his many years of teaching, had no previous experience with DETS. In the days following the inception of the fall semester, students began to stream into my office to express dissatisfaction with their Comparative Sociology course. One of the main sources of frustration for the students was that Dr. Adams usually began each class with a fifteen minute tirade about the hassles of teaching over DETS. As a result of Dr. Adams’s obvious agitation with DETS, the students at BSU-Branch felt intimidated about conversing with him, i.e., since he was already expressing such hostility with DETS, the distant students feared that any queries or complaints might spark a higher level of agitation in their professor. Further, due to the excessive time that Dr. Adams devoted to digressing about DETS, the students felt that he had dedicated an insufficient amount of time to covering important course materials. Thus, even three weeks into the semester, numerous students from the Comparative Sociology course visited my office to ask me what the definition of comparative sociology was. In each case, I recommended that my office visitors should direct such fundamental question toward Dr. Adams. In response, the students claimed that they feared doing so would raise the ire of their professor. When I proposed to the students that they should consider registering their concerns about the course officially, most of the students instantly rejected such a course of action. Indeed, the bulk of the students with whom I spoke asserted that they too were partly to blame for their weak grasp of the course’s content. Several students explained that the lectures in Comparative Sociology had become so tiresome that most of the class would sneak out of the classroom shortly after the beginning of each lecture. This was accomplished without incurring the wrath of Dr. Adams by dashing out the door when the DETS camera had panned to an unpopulated part of the room. Although students remained exceedingly dissatisfied with their Comparative Sociology course, they wished to avoid making any sort of official demonstration of their disapproval. As a result of this behavior, Dr. Adams actually gathered the impression that the BSU-Branch students were highly satisfied with his class. I know this because, after approximately two dozen students had visited my office to complain, I telephoned the Sociology Department Chair, Dr. Bennet. After I had divulged the existence of significant student discontent, Dr. Bennet responded in exasperation that, after many main campus students had registered similar complaints, she had requested a conference with Dr. Adams. In their meeting, Dr. Adams had expressed great displeasure with the students at the main campus, but had added that his principle joy in teaching the course derived from the warm and respectful relationship that he had developed with his BSU-Branch students. Nevertheless, I pointed out that the only reason Dr. Adams had not received the same type of negative response from his students at BSU-Branch was because they had been intimidated, by both Dr. Adams and DETS, into silence and avoidance. Dr. Bennet expressed regret over the situation, but added that there was little more that she could do to change the content or direction of Dr. Adams’s class. Still, Dr. Bennet requested that I encourage students to express the full measure of their dissatisfaction with Dr. Adams in their course teaching evaluations. When I made this suggestion to students, many responded that they were not going to stay in the course long enough to evaluate their professor. As one student put it: Course evaluations are given after everybody who’s already PO’d has dropped the class and left. Okay? So all you have left is the core of DETS students who already know everything and they’re getting along happily. Everyone else who couldn’t sacrifice their GPA has bailed out—and probably very wisely, cause I don’t see it being worth sitting through an entire class to get a “D” or a low “C.” You know? (Interview transcription) Thus, even though many students were desperate for the course credits that would come from completing their course in Comparative Sociology, they dropped the class in order to avoid bad grades and run-ins with Dr. Adams. EXAMPLE 2: In the spring of 1995, a course entitled the Sociology of Culture was offered over DETS by the Department of Sociology at Big State University. This course was taught by Dr. Connors who, as opposed to Dr. Adams, did have some previous teaching experience with DETS—but, unfortunately, Dr. Connors’ experience had been conspicuously poor. Following the conclusion of her first DETS course, the faculty of the sociology department had decided that Dr. Connors should be “banned forever” from teaching over DETS. Regrettably, this eternal ban remained in place for only five years. For BSU-Branch students, their Sociology of Culture course was a disaster from the outset. Once again, in the weeks following the inception of the semester, a steady stream of disgruntled students flowed into my office. Although, once again, I encouraged students to register their complaints with either their professor or the Sociology Department Chair, they were universally opposed to doing so. The final straw for students at BSU-Branch arrived at the point of the first midterm exam: a book that Dr. Connors wished to cover on the exam had never arrived at the BSU-Branch bookstore. Nevertheless, Dr. Connors insisted on testing all of her students on the contents of the book. When BSU-Branch students complained about the injustice of this demand (i.e., main campus students had been able to purchase the book in question at their bookstore since prior to the first day of class), Dr. Connors responded that the branch campus students were out of line. She argued that their special needs were creating an undue inconvenience for, and were therefore holding back, the rest of the class. Following a barrage of requests, I agreed once again to contact Dr. Bennet on behalf of the BSU-Branch students. Dr. Bennet assured me that she would discuss the matter with Dr. Connors and, in the wake of their conference, Dr. Connors relented under protest and modified her exam. Despite Dr. Connors’s newfound willingness to compromise, over eighty percent of her BSU-Branch students dropped her course before the second midterm. Second Class Students A number of BSU-Branch students indicated that being at a distance from traditional classroom settings actually placed them on the lower tier of a “class-based” educational system. These feelings were exacerbated in part by the denigrating undertones that BSU-Branch students detected in the attitudes of both professors and students at the main campus. While the impatience of professors was generally more veiled, main campus students often left little doubt about their feelings for BSU-Branch students. We’re like a sore in their side. They can’t just have a discussion, they have to include us. And to include us they have to make sure they talk into a microphone. There were quite a few times that [main campus] students made comments about us. They don’t like us. It’s kind of like a little war thing going on…There’s no relationship between the students at all! (Interview transcription) These observations were corroborated by the comments of several DETS instructors that I interviewed at the main campus. One professor, who had taught numerous DETS courses, suggested that main campus students were especially perturbed by distant students who—being older, better prepared, and more mindful of the value of education—often made more elaborate demonstrations of their knowledge when they participated in class. Students at BSU-Branch contended that their relationship with main campus students was shaped principally by their professors’ attitude toward, and capability with, distance education. That is, if their professors were not comfortable with the unique challenges of distance education, then, they believed, distant students would always be the ones to suffer first and most. I mean, in this class I’m taking now, I feel like I’m getting ripped off. My professor doesn’t direct the conversation to us. I mean, he’ll say, “You guys at BSU-Branch,” and stuff like that, but it’s not nearly on the same level, no. He talks to the class up there [at the main campus], and the impression you get is that we’re just viewers. (Interview transcription) In turn, attitudes such as these tended to fuel the branch campus students’ perception that they were second-class intruders. Instead of fostering an open environment of participation, many instructors behaved in such a way as to shut off and discriminate against the participation of branch campus students. For example, in response to the “disruptions” that seemed to be produced by rambunctious students at BSU-Branch—but that were instead produced by fluctuations in the fidelity of DETS audio broadcasts—a number of professors routinely muted the incoming audio from the BSU-Branch campus. In this way these “disruptions” were effectively quieted, but at the same time this tactic also imposed an exceptionally harsh and humiliating punishment upon BSU-Branch students. That is, although instructors in traditional classrooms must often call for silence, they cannot physically “mute” their students. Yeah, I mean, we’re not taken seriously. It’s an affront to be muted like that. I mean, we’re really…we’re gone, we’re wiped...Yeah, I mean, we’re distanced from their immediate concern. (Interview transcription) BSU-Branch students also obtained a sense of second-rate status from what they perceived as an uneven distribution of student burdens. That is, being at a distance from the main campus created an added degree of difficulty to every task required of distant students. The resources that were at the fingertips of main campus students (e.g., library, bookstore, professor, etc.) required the negotiation of time-consuming and often frustrating intermediary mechanisms for distant students: professors’ telephones were often busy, the inter-campus document courier service usually involved delays, textbooks were slow in coming and generally too few in number, requests for library materials were often stacked in slow moving queues, etc. Thus, although DETS classes might have maintained the same grading scale for main campus and distant students, because of the added troubles that BSU-Branch students encountered in acquiring necessary course materials, they felt as though they had to work harder to receive the same grades as their main campus counterparts. With any class the idea is that all the Sneetches need to be the same. Everybody should get the same stuff and be treated the same way. We should all have the same access and opportunities, so that, when it comes time for evaluation, we should all be evaluated the same way. But, when you take a DETS course, you feel like you’re Sneetch with no star on his belly. (Interview transcription) Indeed, many BSU-Branch students directed their most heated criticisms toward the unofficial, but, in their view, very real duplicity in their status as BSU students. Although they were officially recognized as being equal in stature to main campus students (i.e., they were registered in the same classes, received the same course credit, paid the same fees, etc.), BSU-Branch students bitterly decried the implicit diminution of status that accompanied learning via DETS. Everybody is equal, we’re all Big State University students. We love BSU football just as much over here. We may not have the same ability to participate over there, but that doesn’t make us anything less. (Interview transcription) I, I feel as though we’re in a bastardized system out here. I really do. That’s my opinion. My feeling is that we are paying the same amount of money as everyone else, and yet, we don’t have the opportunity to interface and have our questions answered like everyone else. (Interview transcription) Because many BSU-Branch students had received the clear impression that their presence amounted to little more than a nuisance, they had also grown to believe that they would only be “welcome” in their classes when they agreed to settle quietly for second rate opportunities, i.e., when they agreed to stand by silently while the “real” students interacted with their “real” instructors at the main campus. Lack of Adequate Training for DETS Instructors The most basic and unavoidable dilemma associated with distance learning is the spatial dislocation between students and teachers. Distance learning makes it more difficult for students and instructors to interact interpersonally—that is, to approximate the experience of “being there” (Miller, et al, 1993, p.55). Despite the widespread sentiment among main campus instructors that their interactions with BSU-Branch students were exemplary, Indeed, for the most part I found students at the branch campus to be much more appreciative of their instructors than those at the main campus—a phenomenon that has been noted by other investigators as well (Johnson and Silvernail, 1994, p. 438). nevertheless, every student with whom I spoke at the branch campus believed that their interactions with instructors could have been better. Almost universally, students argued that their teachers needed to develop a stronger working understanding of distance education technology—this is a point that has also been proposed by other investigators (Stevenson, et al. 1996, p. 22). Students insisted repeatedly that the bulk of their distant professors had developed only the most limited grasp of DETS in particular and distance education in general (Moore, 1993). As a potential remedy, students argued that instructors should be required to achieve a standard skill level with DETS before being allowed to teach a DETS course. To begin with, being unaware of, or being unable to manage the technological aspects of DETS had a tendency to limit unnecessarily the quality of DETS instruction. For example, there were a wide range of technologies available to professors that were intended to shrink the spatial and temporal gaps between themselves and their distant students (e.g., fax machines in classrooms, “virtual office hours” technologies, video conferencing services, etc.). The purpose of the fax machines in DETS classrooms was to enable students to “hand” their instructors samples of their written work and receive almost instantaneous responses. However, despite the availability of these fax machines, none of the DETS professors with whom I spoke at the main campus had the slightest awareness of their availability or purpose. Where to begin improving DETS courses? Well, I think that um, it should probably begin with a faculty orientation on the DETS system. If they’re going to teach a class, then they need to be able to teach it. (Interview transcription) In addition, BSU-Branch students felt that all DETS instructors should be required to sit in on at least one fifty minute DETS class before teaching a DETS class of their own. Students believed that such a training device might help to transform the degree to which courses were structured entirely from the perspective of teachers (Stevenson, et al., 1996, p. 23)—while it would also require distance learning teachers to “walk a mile” (Davison, 1996), or, at least, take a step in their shoes. Without the systematic implementation of policies designed to enhance the awareness of distant students’ specific concerns, BSU-Branch students felt certain that the most critical deficiencies of DETS would never be addressed. Conclusion Distance learning students sometimes find themselves in a bind. While they may be very appreciative of the opportunities that distance education offers (e.g., creating the opportunity to procure a college degree that they could not otherwise obtain), they often have significant concerns about the quality of such an education. Many students believed that distance learning could never be more than an imperfect approximation of the traditional learning experience; they maintained steadfastly that there was simply “no substitute for a flesh and blood instructor” (Schoellhorn 1994, p.14). I found that—in keeping with the findings of Biner et al. (1996)—the more telecourses that students had taken the more disllusioned they had become with DETS. 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