TILT – Therapeutic Innovations in Light of Technology
Research Revie
INTERA
Numerous dissertations and theses receive relatively little attention and here we highlight a few on the subject of online education, across a range of fields. A study at North Central University (Bordelon, 2012) has reported that the level of interaction between students and staff, between students and their peers and between students and their course content, all have a significant impact on students’ achievements and their levels of satisfaction in online training services. A purposive sample of 155 participants in online courses showed marked increases in both variables (p=<0.05 for each). Interaction with staff and with course content seemed to be the most important factors, with the level of interaction between students themselves having less of an impact. Insofar as these findings are generalizable, they carry a clear implication that those trainings that do not offer high levels of interaction will be less valued by their participants than those who do. The author of the study recommend that “institutions implement requirements and guidelines for student-instructor interaction and the incorporation of meaningful studentcontent interaction” (Bordelon, 2012). Perceptions of online learning in comparison with face to face instruction are known to show very few differences, including those in the health care arena (e.g. Ayars, 2012). Elsewhere, program format and length - allowing students to study alongside their current jobs and to
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is the Key to Online maintain their family routines - were found to be the major factors in choosing online learning (Gratz, 2012). A separate study, looking at online tools from the instructors’ perspective, found variations in the degree to which staff take to online methods, however. Those whose style was facilitative were clearly more likely to integrate online resources into their courses but that the level of available resourcing, the instructors’ familiarity with computers and the kind of class were all influential, as were the gender and title under which the instructor worked (Thomas, 2012). Online professional development in the use of computer mediated communication has been supported in another study (Lundstrem, 2012) that showed confidence and experience as key outcomes while also stressing the need for subject-specific training through online mentorship, underscoring the importance of interaction between staff and students in online learning noted above. A third perspective on online education – that of prospective employers – was separately investigated (Bailey, 2012) with tentative results based on a small sample (n = 20) suggesting that those who decide who gets which job do put very little emphasis on whether the qualification was obtained online or not, or whether the training provider operated for profit – although it should be noted that the research was undertaken at an