The study was conducted, in part, to determine if the personality traits of telecourse students differed from those of on-campus students. Without going into the details of the validity and generalizability of the findings of these studies, our intuition tells us that distance students are different from on-campus students. These studies suggest that some of my assumptions about what online students need may have been wrong. For example, based on my experience in the classroom, I thought students would benefit from group interaction. It turns out that online students may be so expedient and self-sufficient that requiring group work creates an obstacle to their progress rather than a source of support.
Several questions emerge about student characteristics.
We need to challenge our assumptions about distance learning students in the online environment. A significant number of my online students in the past few semesters did not really chose the online format. It was the only section of the course with available space. Unfortunately, I don't believe that educational need is driving technological development today. Some suggest that online education is a natural, and perhaps expected, outcome of technological change, and indeed, the methods we use online today wouldn't have been possible 5, or even 2, years ago.