True Learning

When asked what advice they would give to someone new to online learning, the common answers were:

• Keep up with the work
• Become computer literate if you are not already
• Timetable yourself, you are not going to be given one
• Take it one step at a time
• Keep in contact with other learners
• Get in touch with your tutor straightaway if you have a problem or don’t understand something
• Go to the f2f induction to meet people
• Explore the whole online site
• Keep at it

Telephone Interview Analysis

The following is the common criteria for what UHI online learners want in an online course and what is important to them in online learning:

• Tutor support, accessibility & consistency
• Learner support & contact
• Clear & consistent instructions and information
• Accessible and up-to-date information & materials
• Quick & consistent feedback
• Well-run & well-presented site

The top four are:

1. Reliable and consistent tutor support
2. Learner support
3. Clear instructions and information
4. Good quality feedback

In summary, basically what online learners want is to feel part of a community, communicating with other people, with easy access to clear instruction and information.

I have completed 24 email interviews (21 female and 3 male) and 9 telephone interviews (6 female and 3 male) with UHI online learners from the following courses:

• BA Child and Youth Studies
• Bsc Environment & Heritage
• Bsc Rural Development
• BA Cultural Studies
• BA Social Science
• BA Health & Welfare
• BA Rural Health Studies
• Msc Infection Control
• Msc in Medical Device Contamination
• MAPD
• Access to Health Care
• Diabetes Management Module

Out of a sample of 15 UHI online learners (13 female/2 male), who I asked how quickly they would like a response from their tutor to an important email query or discussion board post, the results are as follows:

Immediate…………26.7% (4)
Within 24 hours….46.7% (7)
Within 48 hours….13.3% (2)
Within 72 hours….6.6% (1)
Within 1 week……6.6% (1)

Most said that they realised that their tutors may be busy with many classes or working part-time and that their response choice is ideally what they would like. Most also said that they would at least like all e-mails that contain a question to be acknowledged quickly and for the tutor to follow through with an answer later.

I think that is a reasonable request…

UHI Learner Survey
I have sorted the survey data into various files that show individual course results and have sent the specific data to the course leaders – for the following courses:

BA Child and Youth Studies
Bsc Environment & Heritage
Bsc Rural Development
BA Cultural Studies
BA Social Science
BA Health Studies/Health & Welfare/Rural Health
Bsc Natural Science
BA/Hnc Tourism
Hnc Working with Communities

There are many other courses represented by learners in the survey but the larger numbers came from the above.

I have also posted the survey results for all 205 respondents to a discussion board post within CLAN and asked (emailed) UHI staff to take a look and make observations and comments.

Online Course Developer Survey
I have posted the raw data from the 19 respondents on to a blog page and emailed the 19 to share the data with them.