Education Commons^™

Staff Accessibility And Online Engagement With First-Year Students: An Autoethnographic Reflection, Andrew Kelly

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Studying online is becoming an increasingly attractive option to prospective students worldwide, yet external completion rates tend to be considerably lower than those enrolled on campus. Through an autoethnographic critical reflection process of teaching 27 first-year online students at a regional Australian university, this article considers methods for increasing accessibility and student engagement as well as managing personal challenges supporting online students from non-traditional backgrounds. Among seven key implications for practice, this article argues the need for genuine and open-ended interaction with online students at the early stages of a semester. It also recommends that teaching staff consciously recognize the …

The Online Student Experience: An Exploration Of First-Year University Students’ Expectations, Experiences And Outcomes Of Online Education, Melanie Henry

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Online higher education presents a critical opportunity to extend and diversify the student body. The Online Student Experience (OSE), and online student outcomes, however, remain shrouded in ambiguity. The literature presents conflicting reports of online education (OE) quality, confounded by a lack of appreciation for potential differences between online and on-campus education, and a diversity of interpretations for what constitutes OE. The present research conceptualises OE as representing university courses that require students to interact with instructors and course materials via the internet, with no expectation of attending a university campus. A broad student-centred perspective is notably lacking from the …

Teaching And Learning Online: A Beginner's Guide To E-Learning And E-Teaching In Higher Education, Ron Oliver, Jan Herrington

Research outputs pre 2011

The move to online learning has a huge groundswell of approval and support across all sectors of education and it is likely that this level of interest which has been growing steadily will continue to grow even further in the immediate future. There are a number of clear reasons that can be seen to sit behind the popularity of this form of technology-based education. Some of the more common factors and influences driving the uptake of online delivery include:

• Flexibility: In many institutions, administrators are seeing advantage in the flexibility that online learning settings create for course delivery. The …