[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

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