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Date: Fri, 9 Jul 1999 01:36:55 -0500 (EST)

From: Noriko Hara <nhara@...>

Subject: Students' Frustrations with a Web-based Distance Education Course



[...]



------------------------------------------------------------

Students' Frustrations with a Web-based Distance Education Course:

A Taboo Topic in the Discourse



Noriko Hara (nhara@...) and Rob Kling

http://php.indiana.edu/~nhara/



This is a 2000 word summary.  The full paper is available upon request.



Recent cutting-edge technology, e.g., digital communications and

learning technologies, enables universities to implement distance

education to reach a diverse population and to provide open learning

environments 24 hours a day 7 days a week.  For example, Hanna (1998)

states that "growing demand for learning combined with these technical

advances is in fact a critical pressure point for challenging the

dominant assumptions and characteristics of existing traditionally

organized universities in the 21st century".  Hence, there are

substantial discussions about distance education in higher education.

Consequently the number of distance education courses is growing

(Hanna, 1998; National Center for Education Statistics, 1998; Rahm &

Reed, 1998; Roberts, 1996).  The major body of the literature favors

distance education.  Once consensus is reached, it tends not to be

disturbed by a dissonant idea (Heylighen, 1992).  Indeed, similar

patterns are found in other relatively young fields, for example,

in Business Process Reengineering (Kling & Tillquist, 1998) and

hypertext (Unsworth, 1997) literatures.  However, the studies in

the computer-mediated distance education are more anecdotal than

systematically empirical or critical.  The current trend makes us

believe that distance education will expand educational opportunities.

This article queries this assumption.  The significance of this study

is to investigate problems with web-based distance education.



This is a case study of difficulties in learning effectively in a

web-based distance education course, offered by a major university in

the United States.  The entire course was provided through a web site.

This study is based on interviews and observations of the students

in this course.  Only a small portion of the literature indicates

students' isolation in distance education, although many authors

(e.g. Besser & Donahue, 1996; Twigg, 1997) emphasize the importance

of this issue.  Thus, the primary research question was: How do

the students in this course overcome their feelings of isolation in

a virtual classroom to create the sense of a community of learning?

However, during the observations and interviews with the informants

(including John), it was apparent that students' isolation was not

as big of a problem as frustration in this course.  Possibly because

of the small class size, students supported each other and had a

sense of a community of learning.  The real issue in this course was

the students' frustration, which was not examined in the literature.

Therefore, the final research question in this study was: Do students'

frustrations in the web-based distance education course inhibit their

educational opportunity?  In addition to the main research question,

key questions examined in this study were: What causes frustrations

among the students? How do these students deal with their

frustrations?  Are there individual differences between students who

are comfortable with technology and those who are not?  This article

questions the current literature and advocates the importance of

inquiry on problems in distance education.  Throughout this present

article, we refer to distance education as computer-mediated distance

education.



Higher education in the U.S. is facing a challenge to meet new

demands for the next century.  Various criticisms against traditional

classrooms appear frequently, such as lack of personal attention,

boredom, outdated knowledge, lack of appropriate skills for

workplaces, and inappropriateness for a diverse population (Diamond,

1997; Gardiner, 1997; Handy, 1998; Roueche, 1998; Wingspread Group

on Higher Education, 1993).  Many researchers advocate "solutions"

such as active learning, learner-centered principles, effective use

of technology, and collaborative learning (American Psychological

Association, 1997; Bonk & Kim, 1998; Cove & Love, 1996; ERIC, 1998;

Schroeder, 1996).  Consequently, the expectation for technology is

disproportionately high.



This enthusiastic attitude toward technology is not entirely new.

Kling (1994) identifies "technological utopianism," which refers to

"analyses in which the use of specific technologies plays a key role

in shaping a benign social vision" (Kling, 1994).  A similar attitude

is found in the history of educational technology:



         Most of what we read or hear about computers in education

         emphasizes only one aspect, usually the good points, but

         occasionally the bad, to the exclusion of other points of

         view.  This is at least partly due to the screening effect

         of the popular press, who favor the excitement of extremism

         over the calm of rationality, preferring in the name of

         "reader interest" to create what Monosky (1984) calls an

         artificial dichotomy (Ragsdale, 1988, p. 50).



Both Kling and Ragsdale caution extreme views of technology, either

positive or negative, and suggest that more socially realistic

analyses are needed.



When computers were introduced in classrooms in the 1980s, "extolling

the computers as a boon to critical thinking, professional educators

by and large have been conspicuously uncritical about the computer

itself" (Sloan, 1985, p.1).  Rather than accepting the enthusiastic

attitude toward technologies in education, Cuban (1986) observes an

unrelenting cycle of technology promotion and adoption in classrooms

by reviewing the literature on the educational use of motion pictures,

radio, and television since 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.  Cuban cautions us not to expect too much of computers

in classrooms because their use may follow the same pattern as other

technologies.  As some authors (Dreyfus & Dreyfus, 1984; Ragsdale,

1988; Salomon, 1985; Sloan, 1985) criticize Computer-Assisted

Instruction in K-12, recently other authors also have criticized

educational computing in general, such as information technology

in higher education (see Noble, 1998) and computers in schools (see

Oppenheimer, 1997).



A systematic search of the ERIC database helped to locate some

research about problems of distance education, such as students'

isolation, lack of effective advice (e.g., Abrahamson, 1998; Brown,

1996; Rahm & Reed, 1998).  However, there is little research about

students' frustration in distance education.  A few authors identify

this issue (e.g. Dede, 1996; Freenberg, 1987; Stahlman, 1996), but

these are rather "socially-thin" (Kling & Tillquist, 1998) and do not

indicate the problems in social contexts.  Even the few researchers

who mentioned deeper social factors of the problems in distance

education did not really focus on students' frustrations (e.g. Burge,

1994; Kang, 1988; Kiesler, Siegel & McGuire, 1984).  This topic has

never been in the mainstream of discussion in computer-mediated

distance education.  We question why this phenomenon of students'

frustration has not been seriously studied, and analyze the following

four possible reasons.



First, the researchers who study distance education may be biased

toward technology.  Bowers (1988) also urges that technology is

not value-free.  Many authors in the literature are affiliated with

technology-oriented departments, such as educational technology,

library and information science, or technology support centers.

Therefore, they might have a favorable view of technology, such

as seeing "distance education via technology as a potential silver

bullet" (Twigg, 1997, p. 28).  Noble (1998) asserts that "behind this

effort [promoting technology in higher education] are the ubiquitous

technozealots who simply view computers as the panacea for everything,

because they like to play with them".  In addition, the special issue

of web-based learning in Educational Technology (Hackbarth, 1997) is

devoted entirely to technical issues (e.g. Starr, 1997) and teachers'

perspectives (e.g. Berge, 1997).  McIssac and Gunawardena (1996)

state that "more than 23% of the literature reviewed concerned issues

related to technology and the role of the distance educator" (p. 421).

Burge (1994) asserts that most of the literature on CMC in higher

education is "cautious optimism to hyperbole" (p. 22).  Thus, the

field has not critically addressed negative implications, especially

from students' perspectives in distance education.



The second possible reason that little research on students'

frustration is found is because few qualitative research studies have

been done (Burge, 1994; Windschitl, 1998), so that the fine-grained

dynamics of virtual classrooms are unknown.  In addition, McIssac

and Gunawardena (1996) criticize the research literature in distance

education because of lack of research rigor.



Third, students may not have had opportunities to express their

frustrations with web-based distance education.  At the end of the

semester, students might make positive comments about the courses

because of a relief of finishing a course and concern about hurting

instructors' feelings.  Therefore, since little research has

studied their learning processes throughout the semester, students'

frustrations have received little attention.  That is why the results

of many studies are positive, including such findings as students

enjoying their experiences despite their technical problems (Gregor &

Cuskelly, 1994; Yakimovicz & Murphy, 1995).



Finally, it is possible that past studies were conducted only with

instructors experienced in distance education (e.g. Gunawardena,

1992), not with novices.  More experienced instructors might better

handle students' frustrations, technological problems, and ambiguous

instructions to reduce the obstacles to distance education.



However, the history of educational technology teaches us that it

is necessary to study failures as well as successes.  Bryson and de

Castell (1998) urge that we need to pay more attention to failures of

educational innovation because it will tell us why success stories are

arbitrary.  Unsworth (1997) also argues that "many things that we take

to be trivial, or embarrassing, or simply wrong, will be of interest

to our peers in the future".  He claims that people learn from errors

and failures, and suggests that recording them is necessary to make

progress.



From interviews and observations (thinking aloud), two interpretations

were formed in this study.  It appeared that there were two levels of

frustration among students in this course.  The first level related to

technological problems.  Students without access to technical support

were especially frustrated.  Also, students whose computer skills

were inadequate had technological problems.  The second level involved

the course content.  Students were frustrated because of a lack of

immediate feedback from the instructor and ambiguous instructions on

the web and via e-mail.



It appeared that there was a gap in the teacher's perspective of the

students' frustration.  The instructor seemed to think that she had

solved the problems of students' frustration; she stated during the

interview:



         They [the students] thought that the problems they had were

         basically their own; other people did not have the same

         problem until we opened up the conversation and they realized

         that, oh, yeah, we were all in the same boat.  Now, they have

         this peer support coming in.  That [problem], I think, we took

         care of pretty well.  (personal communication, November 18).



However, her students still expressed their frustration earnestly

during observations and interviews late in the semester.  Part of the

reason for the instructor's misperception resulted from the fact that

the students' e-mail regarding their frustrations were only the tip of

the iceberg.  Students did not express all of their frustrations.



In summary, this study observed that in this distance education

course, students' frustration originated from three sources:



* technological problems

* minimal and not timely feedback from the instructor

* ambiguous instructions on the WWW site as well as via e-mail,



and asserted that these frustrations were so overwhelming that

some students gave up on the formal content of the course.  The

instructor's personal reflection note revealed that two other students

who began taking this course from distant sites dropped it because

they could not overcome technical problems.  In addition, during

interviews two students affirmed that they will not take distance

education courses in the future because they could not deal with these

frustrations anymore.  Therefore, students' frustrations were serious

problems in this distance education course.



We conclude by cautioning about advertising only the virtues of

computer-mediated distance education.  Most of the articles in

distance education (e.g., Barnard, 1997; Harasim, 1993; Yakimovicz &

Murphy, 1995) discuss positive aspects of distance education, whereas

only a few scholars (e.g., Bromley & Apple, 1998; Jaffee, 1998;

Wegerif, 1998) examine the limitations and problems.  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, technology is not a panacea.  It has

trade-offs.



It is time to seriously consider the actual experiences among

students in distance education courses and to critically discuss

the phenomena of distance education.  As Bates (1994) states, "it is

a relatively untested assumption that advanced technologies, . . .,

are pedagogically more effective than older" (p. 1577) technologies.

We also question if technology can improve pedagogy with little

special effort.  For more than a decade Clark (1983; 1994) has raised

the arguments of whether or not media influence better learning.



This case illustrates the frustrations that students can experience

while taking a distance education course, and how these frustrations

can significantly inhibit their educational opportunity.  The current

trend in the literature appears to over-praise computer-mediated

distance education.  This "technological utopianism" (Kling, 1994)

is also found in the history of educational technology in general.

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.  "[I]f failure isn't a possibility, neither is

discovery" (Unsworth, 1997).





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end