Distance education via the Internet: the student experience

This is the second in a series of papers that describes the use of the Internet on a distance-taught undergraduate Computer Science course (Thomas et al., 1998). This paper examines students’ experience of a large-scale trial in which students were taught using electronic communication exclusively. The paper compares the constitution and experiences of a group of Internet students to those of conventional distance learning students on the same course. Learning styles, background questionnaires, and learning outcomes were used in the comparison of the two groups. The study reveals comparable learning outcomes with no discrimination in grade as the result of using different communication media. The student experience is reported, highlighting the main gains and issues of using the Internet as a communication medium in distance education. This paper also shows that using the Internet in this context can provide students with a worthwhile experience. Introduction There is a danger assuming that replacing traditional teaching techniques with new technologies can cause a significant improvement (Dede, 1996; Moore, 1996). There are many examples where attempts have been made to use electronic communication to cope with increasing student numbers (Daniel, 1998) (and proportionately diminishing resources) or to improve learning outcomes (Bischoff et al., 1996; Scardamalia and Bereiter, 1992; Moskal et al., 1997). However, it is vital to discover whether the pressure to increase student numbers overshadows the need to provide students with a meaningful educational experience, and whether course appraisal techniques disguise the quality of the courses that are presented. The Open University (OU) in the UK has an eye on both the future and the past: the future to embrace new technologies with which to enrich its distance teaching programmes, the past to ensure maintenance of standards and quality. Our aims focus on providing valuable and repeatable learning experiences. In our view, improvements in student performance should not come at the expense of the student experience. As a distance education university we are interested in the effects of new technology on the student who is remote from both teacher and fellow students. The Internet could be a life-line for students in remote areas: it is a means for combating their isolation, extending their knowledge, and gaining proficiency in its use (Franks, 1996). It gives students a communications technology that cheaply and quickly connects them to the rest of the world, giving them ready access to information. The issue for educators is how to harness effectively the benefits of the Internet in order to provide students with a fulfilling educational experience (Bates, 1991). The work reported here focuses on the effect of the Internet on student experiences to determine what real gains there might be, if any, in replacing traditional teaching processes with new methods that exploit the Internet. Background The distance approach to education requires an understanding of the issues facing part-time students, including: • dealing with distance: ie, overcoming isolation; • dealing with asynchronous learning: ie, handling delays when help or feedback is not available as soon as required; • managing part-time study: ie, coping with job, family or other commitments as well as studying. Helping students deal with these issues by providing an appropriate support network is reflected in the student’s experiences. The reputation of the OU stands firmly on a high quality “supported” distance learning process (Baker et al., 1996) which has nurtured the “good experience” reported by many of its students over the lifetime of the university. The OU is keen to ensure this experience is not undermined by the use of new technologies. When we first began investigating the use of the Internet in one of our popular undergraduate Computing courses, experienced teaching staff expressed concern about the effect it would have on students. Not surprisingly, they were unconvinced by the argument that the Internet might improve student performance as they had seen technology fads come and go. Their perspective focused on the student experience, ie, the intellectual self-development and self-awareness en route, which they regard as the most valuable aspect of an OU student’s life. Therefore, our investigation of the effects of introducing Internet-based teaching had two main aims: • to examine the experiences of the Internet students and compare them to those of the students on the conventional course; • to identify means of improving the service to students by use of appropriate technology. 30 British Journal of Educational Technology Vol 31 No 1 2000 © British Educational Communications and Technology Agency, 2000. Thus, both the Internet and conventional students studied the same course with the same materials; they attempted the same assignments and they sat the same examination. The difference in treatment between the groups was solely the communications medium. The Internet trial The Internet trial was conducted with the introductory course, Fundamentals of Computing (M205). This course used Pascal as its exemplar programming language and taught data structures, file processing and programming. It attracted students with a range of abilities and backgrounds, from complete novices taking the course as their first taste of university education, to those with considerable experience both of Computing and of distance education. The course was typical of Open University courses; study materials including printed texts, audio and video tapes, CD-ROMs and floppy discs, were mailed to students. Students were required to submit assignments for grading and feedback, and to take a final examination. During the term, students could attend a small number of local tutorials, telephone or write to their personal tutor for advice, and form self-help groups with other students. Thus, students had opportunities to communicate with their tutor, either on a one-to-one basis or in a group situation, and with other students. In our trial, the Internet was used for communication in every aspect of the course’s presentation. Internet students communicated with their tutors and fellow students via electronic mail and HyperNews (a simple electronic news system used for conferencing). In practice, the students used email for one-to-one asynchronous communication, and conferencing for communication with either their tutorial group or their peer group. Tutor-marked written assignments (known as “TMAs”) are the core of the Open University’s teaching system, providing a mechanism for individual feedback and instruction, as well as assessment. Traditionally, TMAs are paper documents exchanged by post: passing from student to tutor, then to the central Assignment Handling Office (AHO), and then back to the student. Despite the excellent postal service in the UK, this can be a cumbersome and slow procedure. In the Internet trial, assignments were processed electronically: students submitted word-processed documents, either by email attachment or secure Web form, to a central database. Tutors down-loaded assignments from the database and, with the aid of a specially designed marking tool, graded and commented on student scripts on-screen. Marked scripts were returned to the central database via an automated handler where the results were recorded. The script was then routed electronically back to the student. Details of the electronic submission and marking system can be found in Thomas et al. (1998). The study groups The students elected to enrol for either the conventional course or the Internet version. In a typical year, the conventional course attracts about 3,500 students; of this, we Distance education via the Internet 31 © British Educational Communications and Technology Agency, 2000. were restricted to about 300 students for the Internet version. The target groups were as follows: • Internet: all students who enrolled on the Internet presentation (300); • Conventional: students enrolled on the conventional course, including students whose tutors also had Internet students (150) and students of selected tutors with only conventional students (50). The composition of the conventional target group allowed us to consider tutor differences as well as to make conventional–Internet comparisons for given tutors. The study Given that the Internet students were self-selected (a “fact of life”, since the OU philosophy prevents researchers from imposing special conditions on students), we were keen to establish how divergent they were from conventional students in terms of the factors we would have been likely to have used to make selections in a controlled study. The data sources for this analysis included: • background questionnaires: used to establish students’ previous computing experience and prior knowledge, helping to assess group constitution; • learning style questionnaires: used to assess whether any student who displayed a preferred learning style fared better in one medium or the other, and to compare the learning style profiles of the groups overall; • final grades including both continuous assessment and final examination; used to compare the two groups’ learning outcomes. The background and learning style questionnaires were sent to students in the target populations at the beginning of the course. Conventional students received these materials by post and Internet students by electronic mail. Background questionnaire The background questionnaire was designed to reveal individual characteristics and, in compilation, to indicate group constitution. It was assumed that it would be possible to assess through analysis whether groups were comparable and, if necessary, to compensate for group differences. It is a self-assessment questionnaire which asks students for their opinions, rather than a psychological index of their