Questionnaires – ready for online learning

[JackieLamb]

All questionnaires make the requirements for successful online learning very obvious. They are all very similar and emphasis the characteristics, skills and learning styles required to complete and online learning course successfully. Most of the questions, within the question, highlight the difficulties which may be encountered along the way – self-discipline, good time management etc. I am ready to learn online and find the research very interesting. However, have not been used to communicating through twitter or blogs in the past. I have already used the content of some of the questionnaires with my students in the past using a secure digital network for students in Scotland – commitment to using the resources online etc was not strong – but they are young. I teach secondary students aged 11-18 yrs.

[ActivateLearn]

I tried a couple of these questionnaires and reviewed them by way of their application in a corporate workplace.

I’m glad that this course has made reference to them.  I’m ready to learn – but how much of our corporate learners are for online learning?

(Interesting to note that in our world – our ‘online learning’ is static e-learning courses and NOT the synchronous or asynchronous learning online forums that academia is also used to. This is because in my corporates we don’t have the platforms to allow these.  In our company, we use Sharepoint that allows discussion forums and the like, but our Learning and Development consultants haven’t packaged up their learning solutions to include a social element so that the discussions and learning can occur elsewhere through these platforms.

This means that as we slowly migrate to this learning, we definitely need a checklist like this to set our corporate learner expectations!

[ScottJohnson]

Did the questionnaires and found them useful for picking out strengths and weaknesses though I wonder if an institution in these times would turn a tuition paying student away because they weren’t ready? We’ve been working for six years trying to build a viable online system of support and training for both students and instructors and only through the convergence of some unrelated factors have we begun actually study and learn where the weak points are in preparing people for online success.

There are three battles to be considered in getting an institution ready for online delivery. First faculty has to be convinced it doesn’t threaten their job while simultaneously telling administration to stop threatening faculty with loss of their job if they don’t “get with the program.” Second is creating a student training and support system run by staff that have people skills. This leaves out the whole IT department who are best left to their machines. Third is our model where we get two service people who are excellent and back THEM up with people who can take time off their regular jobs to volunteer without telling anyone outside the shadowy world of how things are actually done in an institution.

There’s a perception among many HE institutions that online is cheaper than F2F because copies of courses need only be made once and broadcast forever. In addition, the idea of the Digital Native removes the obligation provide services as these wonderful (imaginary) students virtually teach themselves.

As a firm believer in online learning I also recognize most of our schools are not ready to serve students who can’t be seen. Regardless of the nice questionnaires, calling a help line that isn’t answered is a reality that every online student faces and no one ever speaks about what that does to the learning process.

[jimpettiward]

Welcome to the world of online learning!
The underlying assumption of these questionnaires seems to be that a) online learning is completely different from any other type of learning and b) you need to be a particular type of student to benefit from online learning. I’m not sure how useful it is to draw such a strict distinction between online learning and any other kind of learning. Many of the questions asked in these questionnaires are not specific to an online context, for example: ‘Are you a self-motivated and self-disciplined person?’ (Illinois) or ‘I am good at setting goals and deadlines for myself’ (PennState).

All of the questionnaires contain questions about access to technology (computers, phone lines etc.) and IT skills (email, file management, installing software, using chat rooms etc.). These are all useful questions to ask, but I wonder if someone without access to a computer or any IT skills would necessarily be considering an online course in the first place?

Some of the questionnaires go into more detail about learner attributes (Houston, PennState). One potential difficulty lies in the learner’s level of self-awareness – it’s not always easy to accurately judge yourself, especially if the criteria aren’t particularly clear. For example, what does the statement ‘I learn pretty easily’ actually mean?

In summary, some of these tests could be useful in certain contexts as long as the person using them is aware of their limitations and they are not used in isolation. The questions about access to technology and trying to raise a learner’s awareness of their own ability to use various technologies are certainly important. I’m less convinced by the questions related to student attributes (e.g. independent learning, time management etc.) I also found the advice given at the end of limited use. My own teaching context is blended learning, so I would not use them as they are designed for fully online provision.

[jfotheringham]

Having now recovered from ‘questionnaire completion fatigue’ and seen my score drop from ‘ready to go’ right down to ‘proceed with caution’, 😉  a couple of things have been occurring to me as I’ve been reading your contributions to this discussion.  Jackie mentions that the questionnaires ‘make the requirements for successful online learning very clear …’, and I wonder to what extent any one shares my concern that  these kind of inventories give the impression that succeeding in online learning is simply a matter of  ‘getting your ducks in a row’ in terms of  elements such as self management, access to technology, comfort with e-learning and basic ICT skills.  But we know that students persistence and retention is in fact a very complex dynamic and learner readiness is only a small part of the story.  Student retention and persistence are highly complex matters and I find myself thinking “if only it were as simple as that”.

A couple of people have mentioned the issue of student awareness and how this impacts on the validity of the responses that students give to these inventories.  Serena posted to the mailing list to say that we know that students  ‘say’ one thing and often ‘do’ something quite different.  Which one of us wasn’t full of good intentions at the start of a course, with entirely improbable ideas about how much time we would be able to devote to study, how organised we would be (this time!)  and with a set of brand new folders (digital and otherwise) to prove our good intentions?!  I wonder how I would have scored on an inventory which explored how I rated my learner independence, motivation and time management at the end of a course (fellow facilitators with whom I work closely please don’t answer that one!) .

We look forward to meeting some of you at the Webinar tomorrow which will go live at 12.30am.

Regards

Julia

[mrtimbones]

I did all four surveys and they came out positively. The only function that I can determine is that they serve to check/remind prospective students of some of the specific challenges and basic technological requirements of online study. I tweaked my answers (lied a little) and the results were still positive. The value of the surveys obviously depends on the ability of the surveyee(?) to give an honest and objective appraisal of their skills and learning preferences. Such surveys might be of more value if they were perhaps followed up with some form of e-taster course which might perhaps give both student and provider a better idea about a suitability for study.

[SairaAkhtar]

I have to agree with Mr Bones that having done a MSc online I felt I should get a reasonably high score on the questionnaires, so at times clicked on things that I knew would help me get a high score.   However one of the items about online learning I found the couple of questionnaires didn’t deal with, was if you don’t find the topic particularly interesting, how do you motivate yourself to do the work?

 

[ElizabethECharl]

SairaAkhtar,
I don’t think any of the questionnaires touched on that last issue of maintaining motivation during a less interesting module/topic during a course – even more essential in online learning.  I agree that it really should be there – or are we to assuming that this will be covered in some additional support material elsewhere. Along with the please introduce yourself to other particpants on the course you could have a ‘share your technique for getting through’ such an occurrence.

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