The following quotes come from an article by Hara and Kling (1999): ‘Students’ frustrations with a web-based distance education course’. I have picked out the sections that seemed most interesting to me.

The literature about distance education is dominated by enthusiastic studies and accounts.

Distance education advocates argue that the increasing number of online courses will readily expand educational opportunities. This article queries this assumption that these courses may be offered easily by illustrating some of the problems that arose in a specific Web-based course.

We felt that the substantial frustrations reported by our informants in B555 were not incidental and could actually impede their learning. Consequently we shifted the focus of the study to examine how much and in what ways students frustrations in an online course can inhibit their learning.

The expectations for technology to transform higher education are disproportionately high.

There has been an unrelenting cycle of technology promotion and adoption in classrooms since the 1920s. The cycle indicates a pattern; technology was introduced in classrooms by enthusiastic advocates, such as administrators and researchers, but teachers failed to effectively use technology because of the lack of equipment, time and training.

We question why this phenomenon of students’ frustration has not been seriously studied, and identify the following four possible reasons:

  1. The researchers who study distance education may be biased toward technology.
  2. Few qualitative research studies have been done (Burge, 1994; Windschitl, 1998), so that the fine-grained dynamics of virtual classrooms are unknown.
  3. Students may not have had opportunities to express their frustrations with Web-based distance education.*
  4. It is possible that past studies were conducted only with instructors experienced in distance education (e.g. Gunawardena, 1992).

*[i.e. at the end of the course "students might make positive comments about the courses because of a relief of finishing a course and concern about hurting instructors' feelings."]

Motivation is a strong factor that influences student learning (Alexander and Murphy, 1994; Covington, 1993; Stage, 1996). Especially, distance education requires that students be self-regulated (e.g. Abrahamson, 1998). In this kind of learning environment where students are away from traditional classrooms, frustration can be a major obstacle for distance learning.

Wegerif (1998) also reports a student’s comment of a “daunting prospect” of being behind reading messages.

? This is a feeling I can certainly relate to in H800!

[T]he lack of prompt feedback from the instructor was certainly a major source of frustration for students because they were concerned about their performance.

This just seems to be a new course, experimenting with online distance education, and possibly lacking organisation. Pedagogical Issues – Ambiguous Instructions. Students reported confusion from ambiguous instructions for their tasks. I suppose online text-based instructions need to be crystal clear, or a facility for students to ask for clarification and receive rapid feedback. I have experienced similar feelings in the past.

It is acceptable to fantasize about the future when a field is young, because these discussions can propel the field forward. Distance education has great potential for providing rich environments for students; however, as history has taught us, new technology is not a panacea. It has trade-offs.

The authors do not believe this was a case of a ‘poor instructor poorly teaching an online course’:

It appears that even an experienced administrator and online teacher also mis-perceived the kinds of pedagogical shifts required from face-to-face teaching, and could underestimate the extent to which mentoring could be critical.

Clearly, we need more student-centered studies of distance education. We need research that is designed to teach us how the appropriate use of technology and pedagogy could make distance education beneficial for students.

This was in 1998 (?) – the Web was in its infancy. Possibly too early to be doing distance education online? However, full marks for trying! Some of the situations seem very dated – e.g. the comments from students regarding both unfamiliarity and amazement at using a chatroom.