How Students Feel About Online Learning

ELEARNING IS WIDEPSREAD BUT OFTEN UNDERUSED OR USED INDISCRIMINANTLY, AS SHOWN IN THE RESULTS OF A STUDY BY MANZONI, CAPORARELLO AND BIGI

E-learning is pervading higher education, yet it is far from being successfully implemented because of insufficient reflection about the implications for the instructors and inadequate exploration of the learners’ perspective. The latter is the focus of E-Learning Effectiveness from a Students’ Perspective: An Empirical Study, a paper co-authored by Leonardo Caporarello, Beatrice Manzoni, and Martina Bigi, that was presented at the ITAIS Conference and recently included in Digital Technology and Organizational Change (Springer).

The empirical research was conducted in 2015, collecting a sample of 277 university students who answered an online questionnaire. The results were partially unexpected and expected. “Despite recognizing a positive future trend for e-learning, students are still confused with regard to its meaning and have a only limited awareness of its potentialities”, Beatrice Manzoni says. For instance, 45% of students think that e-learning consists in using electronic devices to learn. There is still a high percentage of students who haven’t used e-learning yet (21%) and who are uninterested in using it (20%). “E-learning seems to present more advantages than disadvantages, yet there are still many areas to work on to make e-learning really work.
 
The major advantages are flexibility in terms of time and space, ease and speed in sharing material and the possibility of receiving material from the teacher via a download. Disadvantages are fewer than the advantages. The highest rated one is the ‘reduced social interaction’ compared to a traditional learning context”. A number of implications for instructors follow from this research: “Educating learners about what e-learning is, making people understand how to learn, and being familiar with e-learning systems even before using it. Strengthening those functionalities that are in particular underused. Changing the learning attitudes, improving the learning experience or providing more diverse occasions for use”.

Read more about this topic:
When Learning Becomes an Augmented Experience. Article by Leonardo Caporarello
Business Schools Should Learn from Netflix. Article by Gabriele Troilo
Massimo Magni. Technology Is Not Always Enough
Ferdinando Pennarola. If Learning Is a Game

by Claudio Todesco