Staff and student perceptions of an online learning environment : difference and development

Academic staff play a fundamental role in the use of online learning by students. Yet, compared to studies reporting student perspectives on online learning, studies investigating the perspectives of academic staff are much more limited. Perhaps the least common investigations are those that compare the perceptions of academic staff and students using the same online learning environment (OLE). Much research indicates, at least initially, academic staff most value OLE systems as a mechanism for efficient delivery of learning materials to students. Following the mainstreaming of an OLE at Deakin University in 2004, the data from a large, repeated, representative and quantitative survey were analysed to investigate comparative staff and student evaluations of an OLE, and to explore the evidence for development in the use of an OLE by academic staff. Generally, students were found to give higher importance and satisfaction ratings to elements of the OLE than staff. Students were also more likely than staff to agree that the OLE enhanced their learning. A comparison of the mean ratings recorded for staff in 2004 and 2005 showed that both importance and satisfaction ratings of elements of the OLE were almost universally higher after a year of use of the OLE.

Student support : bridging the gap between students and the university

Bangladesh introduced open and distance learning as a means of providing education for people in isolated and remote locations through the establishment of the Bangladesh Open University (BOU). The broad aim of the BOU is to provide flexible and needs-based education to those unable or not wishing to enter conventional educational institutions. The BOU is presently the only university in Bangladesh to provide mass education and also to provide continuing education and professional and technical education to support the existing educational system. The BOU has a mission that encompasses secondary and higher levels of education. BOU operates its programs through a centralised academic and administrative staff, and regional and local offices throughout Bangladesh that organise local tutorials and distribute information and materials. BOU has adult students in all parts of the country, and most of the students live in rural areas. They need support that is appropriate to their local circumstances. Using an interpretive approach, this research examines the support needs of students studying for the Secondary School Certificate and the Bachelor of Education, assesses the effectiveness of current support services and explores alternatives to the current system. The underlying assumption is that support needs to be appropriate to the country’s culture and circumstances, and useful and feasible from the perspectives of students, staff, administrators and senior university officials. To investigate the appropriate support for distance education students, this research was conducted in four sample regions. Two were selected from areas of sparse population where the terrain makes transport difficult and two from areas that are more densely populated and where transport is easier. A questionnaire survey and focus groups were conducted with students, focus groups with local staff and interviews with Regional Directors within the four sample regions. Interviews were also undertaken with central University senior staff to get their perspectives on current and future policies for student support.

Information skills and the distance education student : an exploratory study into the approaches of Southern Cross University distance educators to the information needs of external students

This study unites the concepts of self-directed learning and information literacy in the external higher education environment. It asserts that many attempts by librarians at building better working relationships with distance educators have failed because the approaches of distance educators to the information needs of students are not adequately addressed. This exploratory and qualitatively based study examines the approaches of ten distance educators at Southern Cross University (SCU) to the information needs of their external students. It then makes recommendations based on these interviews which aim to improve relationships and co-operation between libraries and distance educators and to promote self-directed learning approaches by external students.

Implementation of student active learning in primary mathematics in Indonesia

Twenty years after the first pilot projects began to develop Student Active Learning (SAL) in Indonesia, and four years since it was adopted for use in the last provinces, this research investigates the implementation of Student Active Learning in Indonesian primary mathematics classrooms. A study of the relevant literature indicates that teaching based on constructivist principles is unlikely to be implemented well in mathematics classrooms unless there are high quality teachers, readily available manipulative materials, and a supportive learning environment. As Indonesian schools often lack one or more of these aspects, it seemed likely that Student Active Learning principles might not be ‘fully’ implemented in Indonesian primary mathematics classrooms. Thus a smaller scale, parallel study was carried out in Australian schools where there is no policy of Student Active Learning, but where its underlying principles are compatible with the stated views about learning and teaching mathematics. The study employed a qualitative interpretive methodology. Sixteen primary teachers from four urban and four rural Indonesian schools and four teachers from two Victorian schools were observed for four mathematics lessons each. The twenty teachers, as well as fourteen Indonesian headteachers and other education professionals, were interviewed in order to establish links between the background and beliefs of participants, and their implementation of Student Active Learning. Information on perceived constraints on the implementation of SAL was also sought. The results of this study suggest that Student Active learning has been implemented at four levels in Indonesian primary mathematics classrooms, ranging from essentially no implementation to a relatively high level of implementation, with an even higher level of implementation in three of the four Australian classrooms observed. Indonesian teachers, headteachers and supervisors hold a range of views of SAL and also of mathematics learning and teaching. These views largely depended on their in-service training in SAL and, more particularly, on their participation in the PEQIP project Typically, participants’ expressed views of SAL were at the same or higher level as their views of mathematics learning and teaching, with a similar pattern being observed in the relationship between these latter views and their implementation of SAL principles. Three factors were identified as influencing teacher change in terms of implementation of SAL: policy, curricular and organisational, and attitudes. Recommendations arising from this study include the adoption of reflection as an underlying principle in the theory of SAL, the continuation and extension of PEQIP type projects, changes in government policy on curriculum coverage and pre-service teacher training, and more support for teachers at the school and local authority levels.

Mercantilist Cinderella : Deakin University and the distance education student in the postmodern world

This is a thesis presented on the position of the distance education student at a distance education university in the present era. Traditionally, the distance education student has been a sort of Cinderella: marginalised, being constructed as some form of lesser version of the on campus one. A largely invisible part of the higher education system in Australia since 1911, the distance education student has really only come to be foregrounded in university education discourses from 1983 onwards. It was not until then that the distance education student emerged from ‘hidden pools’ identified by Karmel (1975), and since then the construction of this student has undergone a number of modifications, mapped in this thesis. At the same time university education itself has undergone a series of modifications, not least of which has been its taking on mercantilist overtones as investments made by students in their own careers and professional development. The modifications, also mapped in this thesis, have progressed to the stage where the construction of the old distance education student is now one of a flexible learner in a mercantilist system of university education. The notion of distance education and the distance education student has undergone significant shifts, redefinitions and constructions, which are tracked in this thesis. My research has focussed on a number of pertinent questions, based on a study of Deakin University and its practice since its establishment. The thesis draws on a number of works which have been informed by those of Foucault, and I have framed my research questions accordingly. I have asked why and how Deakin University came into being as a distance education provider at tertiary level. What were the conditions of its establishment and progression in relation to the political events, economic practices and communication technology in use over time? To consider such questions, I needed to analyse the changes that I had seen occurring in the context of wider restructurings in university education. These had occurred in the context of government forging a closer interconnectedness between education and national economic aims and objectives at the same time as it demanded greater productivity in the face of commercial and industrial sector pushes for applied knowledge. Poststructuralist philosophical developments offer tools to explore not only questions of power, but the practical outcomes of questions of power, and how the complicity of individuals is established. This thesis explores ways in which such considerations helped to shape the changing constructions of the distance education student from a marginalised, disadvantaged and under-represented participant in higher education to a privileged, well catered for and advantaged learner. These same considerations are used to explore ways in which they have helped to shape university distance education courses from a perceived second-rate form of higher education to a prototype that better captures the essential elements of learning for what has been styled in a postmodern world as the Information Age. Overlaid on these considerations is a changing view of the economics of such provision of higher education. It is anticipated that this thesis will contribute to developing new understandings of the construction of subjectivities in relation to the distance education university student specifically, and to the university student generally, in the postmodern world. The implications of this examination are not inconsiderable for students and academics in a self-styled Information Society.