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Computer-mediated communication in distance MA programmes: the student's perspective
SYSTEM System 32 (2004) 337–355 www.elsevier.com/locate/system
Computer-mediated communication in distance MA programmes: the student’s perspective q Amos Paran
a,*
, Clare Furneaux b, Neal Sumner
c
a
School of Culture, Language and Communication, Institute of Education, University of London, 20 Bedford Way, London WC1H 0AL, UK b School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, The University of Reading, P.O. Box 241, Reading RG6 6WB, UK c Library Information Services: E-learning Unit, City University, Northampton Square, London EC1V 0HB, UK Received 10 June 2003; received in revised form 23 February 2004; accepted 29 February 2004
Abstract This paper reports on a study of computer-mediated communication within the context of a distance MA in TEFL programme which used an e-mail discussion list and then a discussion board. The study focused on the computer/Internet access and skills of the target population and their CMC needs and wants. Data were collected from 63 questionnaires and 6 in-depth interviews with students. Findings indicate that computer use and access to the Internet are widespread within the target population. In addition, most respondents indicated some competence in Internet use. No single factor emerged as an overriding inhibiting factor for lack of personal use. There was limited use of the CMC tools provided on the course for student–student interaction, mainly attributable to time constraints. However, most respondents said that they would like more CMC interaction with tutors. The main factor which would contribute to greater Internet use was training. The paper concludes with recommendations and suggestions for learner training in this area. 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Computer-mediated communication; Internet; Distance learning; Post-graduate courses; TEFL
q This study was supported by a grant from the University of Reading Teaching and Learning Development Fund to the first two authors. We thank Rosemary Wilson, Alan Tonkyn and three anonymous reviewers for their comments on previous versions of this paper. * Corresponding author.
0346-251X/$ - see front matter 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.system.2004.02.007
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1. Introduction 1.1. CMC in higher education Two conflicting forces exert a strong influence in distance education provision at the beginning of the 21st century. One is the advanced technology at our disposal, particularly computers, the Internet and the World Wide Web. Use of e-mail for interaction between students and tutors is now commonplace; nearly equally so are other forms of computer-mediated communication (CMC), such as on-line discussions between groups of students and tutors, using e-mail, bulletin boards and conferencing systems. These various forms of CMC have in turn given rise to stimulating pedagogies (see for example Egbert and Hanson-Smith, 1999), which are often credited with advances in addressing equity issues, for example, between native speakers and non-native speakers on teacher education courses (Kamhi-Stein, 2000). The WWW is routinely used for research purposes, and many journals are accessible electronically. Indeed, these advances, together with the spread of CMC use in distance education, are so great that in the minds of many people distance education is now synonymous with on-line learning, just as in the past it was equated with correspondence education. The new technologies at our disposal are also associated with current theoretical understandings of learning, predominantly from perspectives within which interaction has a particular place. This interaction can be of various types. Bates (1993, p. 22) distinguishes between interaction with materials and learning resources on the one hand, and interaction with people on the other. Others (e.g. Hawkridge and Edirisingha, 2001) further subdivide interaction with people into interaction with tutors and interacting with peers. Although interactivity is medium-independent (Rafaeli and Sudweeks, 1997), we would nevertheless claim that whereas in the past, distance education was conceptualised mainly as interaction of the learner with learning resources, current models take into account the ability of CMC to enable learners to interact with peers as well as with tutors. As Chickering and Ehrmann (1997) observe, technologies ‘can drive collaboration and group problem-solving’. Although Mason (1994, p. 26) warns against the ‘bandwagon effect’ that means ‘every programme, every technology, every approach is labelled ‘interactive’’, she nevertheless claims (Mason, 1994, p. 28) that students would not be happy with noninteractive courses. There is thus pressure on courses to provide interaction both from a theoretical understanding of what learning is about, and from an external view. 1.2. The digital divide However, while there is pressure to provide interaction through technological means, educators are continuously being reminded of the highly inequitable spread of access to technology (Murray, 2000; Warschauer, 2000). Table 1 below presents a stark picture of what is now referred to as the global Digital Divide. A similar gap is evident within countries: in the US there is a clear divide on lines of race and
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Table 1 Internet users by country (Source: Cyberatlas, 2002) Country
Population
Internet users
Percentage of Internet users
US United Kingdom Japan France Croatia Argentina Venezuela Saudi Arabia Indonesia Pakistan Vietnam Sudan
280.5 million 59.8 million 127 million 60 million 4.4 million 37.8 million 24.28 million 23.5 million 231 million 147.6 million 80 million 37 million
182 million 34.3 million 56 million 21.8 million 480,000 3.9 million 1.3 million 570,000 4.4 million 1.2 million 400,000 56,000
65% 57% 44% 36% 11% 10% 5.3% 2.4% 1.9% 0.8% 0.5% 0.15%
geography (US Department of Commerce, 2000). It is these equity issues which make Warschauer talk about the contradiction between ‘the Internet as a medium of exclusion or voice of pluralism’ (1999, p. 19). The conflict between the power of the technology and its inequitable spread presents both a financial and pedagogical problem for providers of higher qualifications whose appeal is to international markets and who pursue economic viability by offering courses globally. For such institutions, especially those offering courses by distance as well, it is vital to understand the ways in which technology and access to it affect learners and tutors in order to tailor the educational provision accordingly. When the MA TEFL by Distance Study at the University of Reading was launched, students were offered the option of subscribing to a simple e-mail discussion list. However, student participation in the list was limited: on one module only 22 out of 87 students who had taken the module during the first five intakes had posted anything to the list. A small scale study of student participation on the course (Paran, 2000) revealed that, amongst a variety of factors, access was likely to be of great importance. Of the students on the course, 18% did not have access to e-mail, and others, who did have access in theory, were constrained by a variety of factors. Three examples will illustrate this point. One student, working in Japan, had access to e-mail but did not take part in the discussions. When asked why, he answered that he accessed e-mail at an Internet cafe, and was not earning enough as an EFL teacher to enable him to make substantial use of such access. Another student was working at a university in South America, where all staff and students had access to a limited number of computers for about an hour a day; this teacher lived out of town, did not have a telephone line at home, and her participation on the e-mail list was thus extremely sporadic. A third student was even more isolated: she worked in Cambodia, and the quickest way to communicate with her was to fax the head office of her NGO; the fax would then make about a week’s journey by boat to her own place of work.
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Cases such as these indicate that even the simplest technological tools incorporated into a course may not reach the students they were aimed at, and it would not be pedagogically (or indeed financially) advisable to set up courses or modules where such technology was compulsory. Alternatively, any access problems might be offset by the pedagogical advantages of the technology. The study described here therefore set itself the general aim of finding out student access to, use of and reactions to technology in a distance learning context. 1
2. Research on CMC 2.1. The practice of online learning The development of CMC methodologies has generated a growing literature on good practice in online learning (see, for example, Simpson, 2002; Stephenson, 2001). This has been accompanied by observations from practitioners: ‘the mature, non-traditional student is inherently more self-motivated than the traditional, young student and so perhaps less in need of the instructor’s attentiveness’ (University of Illinois, 1999). CMC is seen to have various educational purposes, such as building group coherence among students; sharing information-processing ideas; online tutoring; refining communication skills; and providing feedback to students (Sherry, 2000). The underlying pedagogy of CMC is grounded in ‘theories of active, task-based, process-based, student-centred, constructivist and social engagement’ (Hunt and MacLaine, 2000). In this framework, ‘the learner is building up a personal and contextualised interpretation of experience’ (Goodyear, 2001, p. 74). The learning is individual: each student brings a unique combination of prior experiences and knowledge, which CMC encourages them to share. Learning is, of course, also social and situated: in distance courses, this means that ‘Learners need to interact both with the learning material, and with tutors or instructors, in order to learn effectively’ (Bates, 1995, p. 229). Rowntree (1995, p. 207) claims that in an online environment ‘students are liable to learn as much from one another as from the course materials or from the interjections of a tutor’. A Penn State University report (n.d.) argues that ‘The use of electronic communications technologies should be considered as a tool for creating and maintaining learning communities for learners at a distance’. 2.2. The student perspective However, there are a number of concerns about CMC and its use in educational contexts. One issue is that, although there has already been a considerable amount of
1 The full study included interviews with staff in order to understand their perspective; this paper focuses on the students’ perspective only and findings from the tutor study will be reported elsewhere.
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research into CMC (see Russell, 1999 for a summary of 355 studies), this is a new and growing field and much of the early research has been criticised for being unreliable (see Phipps and Merisotis, 1999). One problem that Phipps and Merisotis identify is that research does not take into account differences among students. In addition, though CMC offers distance students the possibility of participation in an online community, there is little research on what students actually feel about this. Paran (2000), for example, found that the student perspective was crucial in this respect, and that one of the reasons that students did not participate in the discussion list was their conceptualisation of learning: they saw learning as either independent or tutor led, but did not see their peers as a source of knowledge. Indeed, one of the students in that study remarked that he was interested in learning from academics, whereas discussing points with students might mean the blind were leading the blind. Another fundamental concern is expressed by Goodyear (2002, p. 51): ‘Online discussion can be a fruitful source of insights into academic ideas, but it can also appear directionless, trivial and self-indulgent’. This can be interpreted as a call for research into the validity of CMC as well as into the ways in which it is applied. Finally, there is currently little published research into the experiences of students (especially post-graduates) in CMC environments; as Hara and Kling (1999) comment, ‘. . .research on the effect of distance education has been focused on student outcomes. . . but not on the affective aspects of distance education’. An exception in our field is Teague (2001), who reports on students’ experience of synchronous and asynchronous CMC. Her initial findings suggested that even a simple discussion list ‘heightened students’ motivation to learn’. Taking these gaps in research into account, an important strand in the study described was therefore to understand the student experience of CMC within an MA TESOL context.
3. The study 3.1. Research questions For practical reasons, the study focused on one course, the MA in TEFL by Distance Study (henceforth DS) at the University of Reading. The MA in TEFL was launched in 1984, and its distance version was launched in 1997. This is an entirely distance, paper-based programme, with optional individual e-mail support. It initially included an e-mail discussion list, though by the time of the study, this had been replaced by a CMC package (WebBoard). Study time to completion on the distance programme is between two and five years; at the time of the study, there were 134 students on the course, based in 35 countries. The general aims of the study were translated into the following research questions: (a) What type of access does the target population have to computers in general and to the Internet in particular? (b) What type of computer experience and skills does the target population have?
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(c) What type of Internet experience and skills does the target population have? (d) How does the target population perceive the current provision of CMC on the course? (e) What are the CMC needs and wants of the target population? 3.2. Subjects and methodology Two methods of data collection, a postal questionnaire and face-to-face interviews, were used with students on the course. Student questionnaire: The student questionnaire (a combination of open and closed questions) was developed and piloted on face-to-face students on the MA TEFL in Reading (see Appendix A). All students on the MA TEFL by DS Programme were sent questionnaires; the return rate was 47% (63 questionnaires). Comparisons between the target population and the respondent population indicated that the respondents were largely representative of the target population in terms of age, sex and nationality. However, different percentages of students from different intakes (cohorts) responded. Student interviews: Hughes and Lewis (2002) argue that ‘studies of the effectiveness of online learning tend to generalise the student experience’. We therefore set out explicitly to focus also on individual learners. Six MA TEFL students were interviewed at the Reading campus in Summer 2001. These were Distance Study students who had come to Reading to take some modules on campus. All had used email on the course, either on the discussion list or to contact tutors, and two also had some experience of the WebBoard. Since availability was the main factor in selection, the student interviewees are not a representative sample of the group. Interview data were gathered using individual semi-structured interviews which included questions about issues identified from the responses to the questionnaire (see Appendix B).
4. Findings This section combines the findings from the interviews and the questionnaires, organised by research question. 4.1. What type of access does the population of MA TEFL by DS students have to computers in general and to the Internet in particular? On the whole, access to computers proved not to be a problem. All 63 respondents said they had regular access to a computer. 78% of them had access to a computer at home; 19% had regular access at work; 40% had access both at home and at work. Only 3% used Internet cafes for computer access. Access to the Internet was also unproblematic: 93% of respondents had access to the Internet, with 84% having daily access and the rest access 2–3 times weekly. The students without Internet access expected to have it within the next two years at most. No single factor emerged as an overriding reason inhibiting student access to the Internet for personal use. None of
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the factors investigated – time implications of Internet access and work; ease of access, cost of Internet use; cost; of a computer and lack of familiarity with the technology – were judged to be of great importance; all achieved a mean of between 3 and 3.5 on a 1–5 Likert scale where 1 was important and 5 was not important. In addition, those students who did indicate that there were problems with access did not seem to come from any particular geographical distribution. They included students living in high Internet use countries such as the UK, Switzerland, and Spain, and students in countries with low internet use such as Indonesia, Vietnam, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the Czech Republic. As Table 2 indicates, there was a wide geographical spread of respondents in general, and we can therefore safely conclude that there was no or little difference in access between those respondents living in countries of high internet and computer use and those living in countries where such use is much more limited. Having said that, specific comments on access did tend to come from countries of low internet use. For example, a student from Vietnam commented on the large
Table 2 Country of current residence of questionnaire respondents Country
No. of respondents
United Kingdom Japan UAE Italy Uruguay Spain Brazil Sweden Saudi Arabia Greece South Korea Switzerland France Argentina Austria Oman Chile Hungary Thailand Vietnam Venezuela Indonesia Singapore Portugal Netherlands Cyprus Czech Republic Croatia Pakistan
11 5 5 4 3 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
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number of firewalls and the slowness of connections there, and a student in Indonesia commented that they did not have a phone line in the kampong where they were living. 4.2. What type of computer experience and skills do MA TEFL by DS students have in general? Students were asked to self-rate their competence in computer skills. All students claimed they were experienced at using computers for word processing. When asked if they used computers for their own language teaching, however, only 8 respondents (13%) said that they did. In general, these respondents make a variety of uses of computers in their own language teaching: for their own work (e.g. material preparation, record keeping, test writing, curriculum design); for the students’ work (e.g. project work, accessing information); and for communication between teacher and student (e.g. homework discussions). 4.3. What type of Internet experience and skills do MA TEFL by DS students have? Respondents also indicated good competence at using the Internet. 97% had at least some competence at information search and retrieval. 36% had at least some competence at asynchronous discussion groups on the Internet, though only 10% had any experience of synchronous discussion. 50% of the students had some experience of using materials from the Internet and/or CD based materials to support their studies. Men (70%) rated themselves at a higher competence level than women (45%) at using the Internet. More men (50%) also rated themselves as familiar with using asynchronous conferencing than women (31%). An important consideration in materials delivery is preference for reading materials on screen or in print. Currently, students receive the materials in print, but we were interested in knowing how they would choose to read the material if it were sent to them electronically. The overwhelming majority of respondents (97%) would prefer to download materials to paper. In the interviews, most students recognised the value for their studies of using e-mail, especially its asynchronous aspect. Only one student expressed a strong dislike for the medium of e-mail. This student preferred to communicate by phone – ‘intonation tells me a lot’ – but with e-mail ‘you expect immediate response but don’t really get it, it’s sort of in between, neither writing a letter nor speaking’. She would not have chosen to do the course had there been a compulsory online element. 4.4. Use of CMC provision on the MA TEFL 4.4.1. One-to-one communication Use of e-mail to contact tutors on the programme was also discussed with the interviewees. All except one had found the use of e-mail to their personal tutor to be either quite or very helpful. One student commented that it was this aspect of their
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contact with the academic staff which had been the most useful: ‘It helped to point me in the right direction’. This included initial orientation to the course as well as asking for advice on presenting assignments. Affective factors were important for some: ‘it was helpful to be in touch, not about any assignment or anything but it helped to generate a feeling of belonging’. However, four out of the six interviewees specifically mentioned that they were uncertain about how much e-mail contact they could have with personal tutors: ‘I’m not sure how much of the tutor’s time a student can take’. This point was repeated when discussing the nature and extent of e-mail communication with teachers of specific modules. In one case a student said that she ‘was a little anxious about disturbing (the tutor) . . . I somehow felt it was inappropriate to send an ignorant e-mail to someone who was so knowledgeable about the subject, so I just didn’t make any contact at all’. She went on to say that where a tutor had initiated contact (on another module) she had felt much more comfortable and she saw ‘no reason why the tutor shouldn’t make the first move’. Other interviewees had no such qualms about initiating e-mail contact with module tutors and were generally positive about this: ‘responses were always prompt and helpful. . . This was important as it helped me to follow through a train of thought.’ Appreciation of prompt replies was a common theme: ‘with e-mail it’s got to be (prompt) hasn’t it? There’s nothing worse than waiting for an e-mail’. Most of the messages between the interviewees and their module tutors related to clarifying ideas, assignments and reading. One student expressed the view that ‘(e-mail) discussion with tutors helped me reach a standard I might not have reached otherwise and helped me feel less isolated’. Even a student who said that she chose the Distance MA course ‘knowing it would be more isolated. . . I like the autonomy’ went on to add ‘but it’s nice to know there is back up available in this form’. 4.4.2. Many-to-many communication Students in cohorts 1–6 had access to an e-mail discussion list, and in cohort 7 they had access to WebBoard, a bulletin board facility. In spite of the availability of these facilities, 44% had not made any use of the e-mail discussion list and 55% with access to the WebBoard had not used it. The only factor mentioned by a considerable number of respondents (7) was that using the facilities entailed a large time commitment. Three respondents said that they lacked sufficient skill in using the technology. Other factors, mentioned by only one or two students on the questionnaire, were worry about spending too much time at the computer screen anyway; fear of exposing ignorance in front of others; and a lack of knowledge of the use of the e-mail discussion list and WebBoard, including how to send attachments. This point was also raised in the interviews, where one interviewee said ‘I can only admit this to you because I’ve never met you before, but I don’t know how to send attachments or links to the Internet, part of my lack of use of e-mail is a lack of expertise’. Her feeling was that the course team should ‘assume people know very little and send out a simple fact sheet about how to do it. . . give them a little workshop that tells them how to do it. . . and support them if they get into difficulties’. Two of the interviewees expanded on their feelings of being inhibited in
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using the list: ‘I would like some kind of ‘warm up’ activity. . . before I did the course so that I could feel comfortable with the technology, and know that other people were listening’. Another said ‘It’s a bit daunting at first, people think its more difficult than it turns out to be. . . students starting with the technology may need their hand held a bit in the first instance, for example with sending material to the right conference’. Inhibitions were raised for academic reasons as well. One interviewee said: ‘I felt like a newcomer. . . this made me shy because I might ask something silly. It’s like going into a room with a blindfold on, a room full of highly academic people and I didn’t want to appear too silly’. Another student felt the e-mail discussion list was ‘. . .used as an arena for showing off. . . it scared the living daylights out of me, . . .so I haven’t contributed to it at all. . . because I don’t want everyone to read what I am going to write, because it’s not just my cohort, is it? It’s everybody, and I thought ‘well for most of them it’s not going to be relevant is it?’’. Commenting on the tone of some of the contributions to the discussion list, she suggested that they were too direct and she would have welcomed a suggesting rather than a directing tone. She also suggested that there should be some guidance on writing both formal and informal e-mails. This student found the short biographical data of fellow students sent to all ‘really interesting’ but felt they could be developed ‘to build up a sense of shared identity with the rest of the cohort’. Another student commented that she ‘wanted to get a feel about who else was on the course, to get a concept of the cohort . . . but it didn’t work. The list didn’t seem very interactive, but some of the discussions looked interesting even though I wasn’t doing the module’. The fact that the e-mail discussion list was open to members of all cohorts elicited different opinions. One interviewee said ‘I don’t really want to read what X from cohort 5 has to say about her dissertation, that’s of no interest to me. . . I’m not interested in cross-cohort discussion, for me I might think these are things I should be worrying about which I hadn’t thought about before. . . I wouldn’t want to be involved with great discussions because it’s a big time waster’. Another student observed that ‘I can see that (it) could be enormously helpful, but pressure of time crowds it out’, continuing ‘I work full time. . . tend to work in bursts with no regular pattern but when I am working I am usually rushing to get through the material’. On the other hand, another student stated that ‘I like to read what other students have said’; another, who wondered ‘are any others sharing the same experience or do people who have done that module have experience which they can pass on?’, reiterated this point. Yet another felt that ‘ongoing cross cohort discussion would be the most helpful’. One student reflected that ‘while some contributions (to the discussion list) have been irrelevant for me I like to know what different cohorts are doing’. Four of the interviewees felt that more use could be made of the discussion list and one of them said ‘I would have liked more discussion on the e-mail list, I posted questions but didn’t get a lot of response’. Two of the students interviewed had some experience of using the WebBoard. Referring to the ice breaker activities recommended by the Course team, which included posting a brief personal biopic on the list, another said that ‘the biopics were
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really interesting but didn’t make me feel warmer towards the others, that is to say more confident about breaking the ice. . . I didn’t know how to use the ‘thing’.’ Another student stated that he checked the discussion board once a week even though he did not participate. This student had done one module during the programme that invited contributions to a module-specific e-mail discussion list and noticed ‘that if you take the first step, then others respond’. He felt this stemmed from ‘a need to be confident and competent in using the technology to be able to be active’. Interestingly, one way in which the many-to-many provision on the course is used was reported by three of the six interviewees, who first made contact with other students on the discussion list and continued this through private e-mail exchanges and then a series of productive face-to-face meetings. 4.5. What are the CMC needs and wants of the target population? In general, the costs of a computer and Internet access do not seem to be important factors inhibiting the use of CMC for most students. However, training is: 63% of respondents said they would be more likely to use the Internet if they had more training. This was also evident in the interviews, where three of the six interviewees expressed interest in having some pre-course training in e-mail use to support their MA studies (see also Section 4.4). Students were asked to what extent it would be useful for them to have more contact with their academic tutors. On a 1–5 Likert scale (where 1 ¼ very useful), the mean score was 2; 92% of the answers were 3, 2 or 1. In many cases this was specifically linked to help with module materials, progress, and feedback on assignments: when students asked what they would like to gain from additional contact, the largest number of requests (43%) specifically requested more feedback from tutors, either about their progress generally or about their assignments. 81% of respondents expressed a willingness to share ideas with fellow students over the Internet, although there were some differences of opinion on what the benefits might be and what the priorities should be. A widely shared feeling was well expressed by one student who said that greater use of CMC would stop them ‘feeling like a castaway on a Distance Learning Island’. Of those who were not willing to get involved in this way, the two main objections concerned the extra time it would consume, and the potential loss of learner autonomy. One respondent was concerned about the possibility of plagiarism resulting from putting their ideas online. There were also mixed reactions to the possibility of doing collaborative work with other students. Six students were very interested in this, as against 21 who were not at all interested. In open ended comments on this question, most students expressed a preference for ‘flexibility and working alone’ or mentioned time constraints. There clearly was a lot of demand among questionnaire respondents for more online activity. Imaginative suggestions as to what forms this might take included making use of each other’s students for research purposes; cooperating in tracking down references; and more structured online activities to help students discuss
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module content. Two of the interviewees had suggestions for developing the use of CMC on the course, one stating that she ‘would like to have synchronous online chat for say half an hour with a pre-agreed agenda, each student to have a certain allocation’. But she was worried that ‘it’s too time consuming. I feel I should be working but I’m on the computer’. Another suggested that ‘a topic could be put forward, a controversial statement’ and discussion invited, but echoed the time concern. Compulsory online conferencing worried one interviewee who valued ‘the lack of lockstep. . . because we have different working patterns over an eight week module’. Two interviewees felt that a cafe or social chat area (available in WebBoard) would be helpful, one commenting that ‘the social getting to know everyone makes it easy to get involved in academic discussion’. Asked about other facilities which they felt could be made available online, 95% of students felt that it would be very useful or quite useful to be able to access academic materials on the Internet for further reading online, including being able to access TEFL magazines and journals on the Web. Specific suggestions were course outlines, bibliographies, online study skills, including help with issues of assignment presentation, as well as module specific discussions. There was also some interest in an unmoderated online chat facility for students.
5. Discussion 5.1. Overview of findings Before we discuss our overall conclusions, we must acknowledge the caveats attached to this study. The first, obvious limitation of our work is that it looks at students who have already embarked on a Distance Study course, and are thus a selfselected group. There is further self-selection involved in returning the questionnaire, and these processes may have influenced our findings. A further limitation is the numbers: we have looked at students from only one university, with a limited number of respondents (though within this limitation we have been able to collect data from a fairly large percentage of students.) This also means that each country is represented by a small number of subjects, making cross-country comparisons unreliable. In addition, we do not have any baseline data about our students before they embarked on the course, and the student views we discuss above may have been partly influenced by the educational experience on the programme. We did not probe into the students’ conceptualisations of and attitudes towards learning, though some of this emerged in the interviews. This study sought to find out how students perceive CMC use in the context of a whole programme. In general, we found that for our target population of ELT professionals worldwide, access to computers and to the Internet was widespread. Thus our students seem to be on the fortunate side of the digital divide we discussed at the beginning of this paper, despite the fact that Internet access is not a requirement of the programme. However, while our students were experienced in word
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processing, emailing and Internet use, only a minority had any expertise of on-line discussion groups. The male–female differentiation with regard to perceived competence is also interesting and corroborates previous findings about the sex divide (see Warschauer, 1999). A number of factors suggest themselves to explain the rather limited use of the CMC tools provided on the programme. Time constraints, rather than access, are clearly a major factor here and these will remain an issue where CMC is an optional add-on to any programme. Although we are unable to make direct comparisons, the pattern of responses suggests that of the three possible sources for interaction – learning resources, tutors, and peers – the subjects in this study prefer the first two. They do not seem to view the other learners on the course as a very powerful source for interaction. The conceptualisation of learning that they have is still quite strongly focused on the tutor (see Section 4.4), and although students expressed a willingness to share ideas with fellow students, they nevertheless seemed to be more positive about contact with tutors. 5.2. Learner training One factor which has emerged as important in our students’ eyes is the issue of training. This tallies with Salmon’s (2000) five stage model of teaching and learning online using CMC, where, in the first step ‘access and motivation’, students set up the system and access it, and in the second step, ‘online socialisation’, students send and receive messages and tutors help learners to become familiar with the learning environment. During this second stage the tutor is also helping learners build bridges between cultural, social and learning environments, and it is probably at this second stage that one could deal with the fear which some of our subjects expressed of exposing their ignorance in a public forum. In the following stages, students experience and work on information exchange (Stage 3); engage in knowledge construction (Stage 4) and finally take control of their own development and learning (Stage 5). Learner training in the initial two stages is vital to making students comfortable with the technology and able to use it to their advantage. From our findings, however, students very clearly need to be socialised into an understanding of learning which values the contributions made by fellow students, and in which they are expected to contribute. There is some indication in the students’ views quoted above that they still view knowledge as originating in the teacher, or as constructed by them in communication with the tutors. It seems that they do not see the value of knowledge construction with their peers. This suggests that in addition to receiving training in the technical aspects of a course, learner training should also focus on the ways in which collaboration can be beneficial. The benefits of collaboration may be seen as alleviating time constraints by dividing up the work; insights into situations that an individual student might not encounter personally; developing thinking through discussion and collaboration. If these goals are made explicit to students, resistance to collaborative work should be reduced. How can the course team change such attitudes? Doing this probably entails thinking in two directions. One is making online work compulsory. This would
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mean that students would not perceive such work as a waste of time, but rather as part of the course. Where ‘attendance’ on online contributions is monitored, or where assessment requires reflection on a student’s own contributions to a discussion (see below), it is more likely that students will attempt to contribute something. 5.3. Type of task Much of the training discussed above can also be linked to the type of task which the learner engages in. Tasks that are too open ended, too early on in the course, are not likely to encourage students to participate. Structured activities which are managed by the e-moderator are more likely to result in interaction and pushing learners. Sample tasks may include the following: • comparing classroom data with each other; • jigsaw tasks where each student has different information; • reaching agreed solutions to problems posed by tutors; • jigsaw tasks where each student is responsible for a different aspect of the work; • collaborating on a project where students self-assign to different tasks. 5.4. Structural differentiation in programmes The activities listed above, however, take any programme quite far away from the way in which the e-mail discussion list described above was conceived. Courses which require collaborative work entail a very different conception of learning not only on the part of the student, but also on the part of the tutors and the programme. The structure of the MA TEFL by DS at the University of Reading does not require collaborative work; any collaboration between students is voluntary, and is discussion-based rather than task-based. Implementing tasks like the ones outlined above would therefore result in a different type of programme. A different way of achieving greater participation is to make online contributions and reactions to the work of others compulsory; students then submit their best pieces for inclusion in an assessed portfolio of work. Obviously, there will always be students who may not wish to work in this way, and for them other types of course may prove more successful (see Paran, 2002 for a discussion of these issues).
6. Conclusion This study was motivated partly by the belief that low student participation in an online component of an MA degree by Distance Study was largely affected by issues of access and the digital divide. Contrary to our expectations, this was not the case. There are many reasons why such students do not interact with each other online. Foremost among these is the time factor and the perception of lack of added value through this type of participation. Students see online interaction with tutors as being more advantageous, and in order to broaden the base of students prepared to
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engage with others in co-construction of knowledge, programme leaders may need to devote more thought to learner training and to a restructuring of the programme.
Appendix A. Student questionnaire Note: In the interest of space, only questions that are reported in this article are listed below. Questions 1–6: Demographic details 7. Do you have regular access to a computer? Yes
No
8. Is this access At home
At work?
Other – please specify
9. Does the computer you use most often have a modem to connect to the Internet? Yes
No
10. How do you rate your computer skills? a. Word processing
b. Information search and retrieval on the Internet (using search engines)
c. Asynchronous discussion groups
d. Synchronous online chat (participants are online at the same time as each other)
Never Used Some competence Competent High competence Never Used
Some competence Competent High competence Never Used Some competence Competent High competence Never Used
Some competence Competent High competence
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11. Is access to the Internet available to you Daily?
2–3 times a week?
Less than this?
12. If you do not have access to the Internet at present, do you expect to have Internet access In the next year? In the next three years?
In the next two years? Do not know.
13. If you are not able to access the Internet regularly for personal use what are the factors inhibiting you? For each factor please indicate its importance to you where 1 is very important and 5 is not at all important. Cost of a computer? Costs of using the Internet? Ease of access ? It is too time consuming? Lack of familiarity with the technology?
1 1 1 1 1
2 2 2 2 2
3 3 3 3 3
4 4 4 4 4
5 5 5 5 5
Other – please specify: 16. Have you ever used materials from a CD Rom or the Internet for your academic studies? Yes
No
17. If not, please indicate briefly why not. 18. If your answer to Question 16 was yes, how easy do you find using such materials? Very easy Not at all easy
Quite easy
19. If MA TEFL programme materials, currently only available in print, were to be made available to you online, how would you choose to use them? Would you a. Prefer to download materials on to paper for your studies? Yes
No
b. Prefer reading materials on the screen? Yes
No
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20. How useful would it be to have access to academic materials, e.g. online lectures, research articles, links to relevant websites, via the Internet? Please rate 1 – 5 where 1 is very useful, 5 is no use at all. 1 – very useful
2
3
4
5 – not useful at all
21. How useful would it be to you to have more frequent contact with your tutors over the Internet? 1 – very useful
2
3
4
5 – not useful at all
22. Please indicate which aspects you would find helpful (e.g. sharing notes, discussing ideas and/or problems with your fellow students, commenting on each other’s work, etc.) 23. Would you be prepared to share your comments on different components of the course with fellow students in an online course conference? Yes
No
24. How interested would you be in working on collaborative projects with your fellow students (e.g. working together to produce a group answer to specific tasks in the course materials, or conducting a survey and pooling the results, etc.?) 25. Would you like any other facilities related to your course to be available to you on line, e.g. e-mail feedback from your tours about your progress, more opportunity to chat with fellow students in a social area unmoderated by your tutors, module specific discussions? Yes
No
26. Please specify which of these facilities appeal to you, or add any others you feel may be of use. 27. Do you make use of computers in your language teaching? Yes
No
29. If you do use computers in your language teaching, what do you use them for? 30. Have you used the e-mail discussion facility? Yes
No
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31. If the answer to the previous question is yes, how helpful have you found this support to your studies? Very helpful Quite helpful Not at all helpful 32. If you have not made use of the e-mail support facility, please explain why not. (Questions 33–38 were similar to questions 30–32, relating to the use of WebBoard). 39. If you have any other comments about how using the Internet might help you on an academic course such as the MA in TEFL then please add them here or over the page.
Appendix B. Semi-structured interview schedule for students How much have you used e-mail to specific tutors on the modules that you take? Did you find a difference in e-mail use patterns between different modules? How much do you use the discussion list? What patterns do you think you can identify in your e-mail use during the course? What did you use the discussion list for? What would make it easier for you to use the e-mail discussion list? What made you decide whether to e-mail a tutor or e-mail the discussion list? Can you give examples of helpful tutor behaviour on the discussion list? Can you give examples of unhelpful tutor behaviour on the discussion list? Can you give examples of helpful student behaviour on the discussion list? Can you give examples of unhelpful student behaviour on the discussion list? Can you give an example of something you learnt from e-mail which you could not have learned otherwise?
References Bates, A.W., 1993. Theory and practice in the use of technology in distance education. In: Keegan, D. (Ed.), Theoretical Principles in Distance Education. Routledge, London, pp. 133–213. Bates, A.W., 1995. Technology, Open Learning and Distance Education. Routledge, London. Chickering, A.W., Ehrmann, S.C., 1997. Implementing the Seven Principles: Technology as Lever. Available from (accessed 10 December 2003). CyberAtlas, 2002. The World’s Online Population. Available from (accessed February 13, 2004). Egbert, J., Hanson-Smith, E. (Eds.), 1999. CALL Environments: Research, Practice and Critical Issues. TESOL, Alexandria, VA. Goodyear, P., 2001. Effective networked learning in higher education: notes and guidelines. Final Report to JCALT of Networked Learning in Higher education Project, vol. 3. Centre for Studies in Advanced Learning Technology, Lancaster University, Lancaster. Available from (accessed 19 May 2003).
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Goodyear, P., 2002. Psychological foundations for networked learning. In: Steeples, C., Jones, C. (Eds.), Networked Learning: Perspectives and Issues. Springer, London, pp. 49–75. Hara, N., Kling, R., 1999. Students’ Frustrations with a Web-Based Distance Education Course. First Monday, vol. 4, number 12. Available from (accessed 8 December 2003). Hawkridge, D., Edirisingha, P., 2001. Interaction through media, texts and technologies. In: H802 Course Guide, Block 4 Section 6. The Open University, Milton Keynes. pp. 103–122. Hughes, G., Lewis, H., 2002. Who are successful online learners? [Online] Available from (accessed 23 May 2003). Hunt, S.G., McLaine, T., 2000. Enabling information literacy skills in postgraduate health professionals: maximising their learning potential. Available from (accessed 22 May 2003). Kamhi-Stein, L., 2000. Looking to the future of TESOL Teacher Education: Web-based Bulletin Board Discussions in a methods course. TESOL Quarterly 34 (3), 423–455. Mason, R., 1994. Using Communications Media for Open and Flexible Learning. Kogan Page, London. Murray, D.E., 2000. Protean communication: the language of computer-mediated communication. TESOL Quarterly 34 (3), 397–421. Paran, A., 2000. Tutor–student interaction on a distance MA. Paper presented at the 34th Annual TESOL Convention, Vancouver, BC, Canada, March 14–18. Paran, A., 2002. Distance learning for CPD: horses for courses. Modern English Teacher 11 (4), 4–10. Penn State University. n.d. An emerging set of guiding principles and practices for the design and development of distance education. Available from (accessed 23 May 2003). Rafaeli, S., Sudweeks, F., 1997. Networked interactivity. Available from (accessed 8 December 2003). Rowntree, D., 1995. Teaching and learning online: a correspondence education, for the 21st century? British Journal of Educational Technology 26 (3), 205–215. Russell, T.L., 1999. No Significant Difference Phenomenon. North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA. Salmon, G., 2000. E-moderating: The Key to Teaching and Learning Online. Kogan Page, London. Sherry, L., 2000. The nature and purpose of online discourse: a brief synthesis of current research [online]. Available from (accessed 22 May 2003). Simpson, O., 2002. Supporting Students in Online, Open and Distance Learning. Kogan Page, London. Stephenson, J. (Ed.), 2001. Teaching and Learning Online. Kogan Page, London. Teague, J., 2001. What’s it like to study a distance Master’s online? In: Brett, P. (Ed.), CALL in the 21st Century CD-ROM. IATEFL, Whitstable. University of Illinois, 1999. Report of the University of Illinois Teaching at an Internet Distance Seminar December 1999 [online]. Available from (accessed 22 May 2003). US Department of Commerce, 2000. Falling through the net: toward digital inclusion. A Report on Americans’ Access to Technology Tools. US Department of Commerce, Washington, DC. Available from (accessed 19 February 2004). Warschauer, M., 1999. Electronic Literacies: Language, Culture and Power in Online Education. Lawrence Erlbaum, Mahwah, NJ. Warschauer, M., 2000. The changing global economy and the future of English teaching. TESOL Quarterly 34 (3), 511–535.
Computer-mediated communication in distance MA programmes: the student’s perspective q Amos Paran
a,*
, Clare Furneaux b, Neal Sumner
c
a
School of Culture, Language and Communication, Institute of Education, University of London, 20 Bedford Way, London WC1H 0AL, UK b School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, The University of Reading, P.O. Box 241, Reading RG6 6WB, UK c Library Information Services: E-learning Unit, City University, Northampton Square, London EC1V 0HB, UK Received 10 June 2003; received in revised form 23 February 2004; accepted 29 February 2004
Abstract This paper reports on a study of computer-mediated communication within the context of a distance MA in TEFL programme which used an e-mail discussion list and then a discussion board. The study focused on the computer/Internet access and skills of the target population and their CMC needs and wants. Data were collected from 63 questionnaires and 6 in-depth interviews with students. Findings indicate that computer use and access to the Internet are widespread within the target population. In addition, most respondents indicated some competence in Internet use. No single factor emerged as an overriding inhibiting factor for lack of personal use. There was limited use of the CMC tools provided on the course for student–student interaction, mainly attributable to time constraints. However, most respondents said that they would like more CMC interaction with tutors. The main factor which would contribute to greater Internet use was training. The paper concludes with recommendations and suggestions for learner training in this area. 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Computer-mediated communication; Internet; Distance learning; Post-graduate courses; TEFL
q This study was supported by a grant from the University of Reading Teaching and Learning Development Fund to the first two authors. We thank Rosemary Wilson, Alan Tonkyn and three anonymous reviewers for their comments on previous versions of this paper. * Corresponding author.
0346-251X/$ - see front matter 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.system.2004.02.007
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1. Introduction 1.1. CMC in higher education Two conflicting forces exert a strong influence in distance education provision at the beginning of the 21st century. One is the advanced technology at our disposal, particularly computers, the Internet and the World Wide Web. Use of e-mail for interaction between students and tutors is now commonplace; nearly equally so are other forms of computer-mediated communication (CMC), such as on-line discussions between groups of students and tutors, using e-mail, bulletin boards and conferencing systems. These various forms of CMC have in turn given rise to stimulating pedagogies (see for example Egbert and Hanson-Smith, 1999), which are often credited with advances in addressing equity issues, for example, between native speakers and non-native speakers on teacher education courses (Kamhi-Stein, 2000). The WWW is routinely used for research purposes, and many journals are accessible electronically. Indeed, these advances, together with the spread of CMC use in distance education, are so great that in the minds of many people distance education is now synonymous with on-line learning, just as in the past it was equated with correspondence education. The new technologies at our disposal are also associated with current theoretical understandings of learning, predominantly from perspectives within which interaction has a particular place. This interaction can be of various types. Bates (1993, p. 22) distinguishes between interaction with materials and learning resources on the one hand, and interaction with people on the other. Others (e.g. Hawkridge and Edirisingha, 2001) further subdivide interaction with people into interaction with tutors and interacting with peers. Although interactivity is medium-independent (Rafaeli and Sudweeks, 1997), we would nevertheless claim that whereas in the past, distance education was conceptualised mainly as interaction of the learner with learning resources, current models take into account the ability of CMC to enable learners to interact with peers as well as with tutors. As Chickering and Ehrmann (1997) observe, technologies ‘can drive collaboration and group problem-solving’. Although Mason (1994, p. 26) warns against the ‘bandwagon effect’ that means ‘every programme, every technology, every approach is labelled ‘interactive’’, she nevertheless claims (Mason, 1994, p. 28) that students would not be happy with noninteractive courses. There is thus pressure on courses to provide interaction both from a theoretical understanding of what learning is about, and from an external view. 1.2. The digital divide However, while there is pressure to provide interaction through technological means, educators are continuously being reminded of the highly inequitable spread of access to technology (Murray, 2000; Warschauer, 2000). Table 1 below presents a stark picture of what is now referred to as the global Digital Divide. A similar gap is evident within countries: in the US there is a clear divide on lines of race and
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Table 1 Internet users by country (Source: Cyberatlas, 2002) Country
Population
Internet users
Percentage of Internet users
US United Kingdom Japan France Croatia Argentina Venezuela Saudi Arabia Indonesia Pakistan Vietnam Sudan
280.5 million 59.8 million 127 million 60 million 4.4 million 37.8 million 24.28 million 23.5 million 231 million 147.6 million 80 million 37 million
182 million 34.3 million 56 million 21.8 million 480,000 3.9 million 1.3 million 570,000 4.4 million 1.2 million 400,000 56,000
65% 57% 44% 36% 11% 10% 5.3% 2.4% 1.9% 0.8% 0.5% 0.15%
geography (US Department of Commerce, 2000). It is these equity issues which make Warschauer talk about the contradiction between ‘the Internet as a medium of exclusion or voice of pluralism’ (1999, p. 19). The conflict between the power of the technology and its inequitable spread presents both a financial and pedagogical problem for providers of higher qualifications whose appeal is to international markets and who pursue economic viability by offering courses globally. For such institutions, especially those offering courses by distance as well, it is vital to understand the ways in which technology and access to it affect learners and tutors in order to tailor the educational provision accordingly. When the MA TEFL by Distance Study at the University of Reading was launched, students were offered the option of subscribing to a simple e-mail discussion list. However, student participation in the list was limited: on one module only 22 out of 87 students who had taken the module during the first five intakes had posted anything to the list. A small scale study of student participation on the course (Paran, 2000) revealed that, amongst a variety of factors, access was likely to be of great importance. Of the students on the course, 18% did not have access to e-mail, and others, who did have access in theory, were constrained by a variety of factors. Three examples will illustrate this point. One student, working in Japan, had access to e-mail but did not take part in the discussions. When asked why, he answered that he accessed e-mail at an Internet cafe, and was not earning enough as an EFL teacher to enable him to make substantial use of such access. Another student was working at a university in South America, where all staff and students had access to a limited number of computers for about an hour a day; this teacher lived out of town, did not have a telephone line at home, and her participation on the e-mail list was thus extremely sporadic. A third student was even more isolated: she worked in Cambodia, and the quickest way to communicate with her was to fax the head office of her NGO; the fax would then make about a week’s journey by boat to her own place of work.
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Cases such as these indicate that even the simplest technological tools incorporated into a course may not reach the students they were aimed at, and it would not be pedagogically (or indeed financially) advisable to set up courses or modules where such technology was compulsory. Alternatively, any access problems might be offset by the pedagogical advantages of the technology. The study described here therefore set itself the general aim of finding out student access to, use of and reactions to technology in a distance learning context. 1
2. Research on CMC 2.1. The practice of online learning The development of CMC methodologies has generated a growing literature on good practice in online learning (see, for example, Simpson, 2002; Stephenson, 2001). This has been accompanied by observations from practitioners: ‘the mature, non-traditional student is inherently more self-motivated than the traditional, young student and so perhaps less in need of the instructor’s attentiveness’ (University of Illinois, 1999). CMC is seen to have various educational purposes, such as building group coherence among students; sharing information-processing ideas; online tutoring; refining communication skills; and providing feedback to students (Sherry, 2000). The underlying pedagogy of CMC is grounded in ‘theories of active, task-based, process-based, student-centred, constructivist and social engagement’ (Hunt and MacLaine, 2000). In this framework, ‘the learner is building up a personal and contextualised interpretation of experience’ (Goodyear, 2001, p. 74). The learning is individual: each student brings a unique combination of prior experiences and knowledge, which CMC encourages them to share. Learning is, of course, also social and situated: in distance courses, this means that ‘Learners need to interact both with the learning material, and with tutors or instructors, in order to learn effectively’ (Bates, 1995, p. 229). Rowntree (1995, p. 207) claims that in an online environment ‘students are liable to learn as much from one another as from the course materials or from the interjections of a tutor’. A Penn State University report (n.d.) argues that ‘The use of electronic communications technologies should be considered as a tool for creating and maintaining learning communities for learners at a distance’. 2.2. The student perspective However, there are a number of concerns about CMC and its use in educational contexts. One issue is that, although there has already been a considerable amount of
1 The full study included interviews with staff in order to understand their perspective; this paper focuses on the students’ perspective only and findings from the tutor study will be reported elsewhere.
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research into CMC (see Russell, 1999 for a summary of 355 studies), this is a new and growing field and much of the early research has been criticised for being unreliable (see Phipps and Merisotis, 1999). One problem that Phipps and Merisotis identify is that research does not take into account differences among students. In addition, though CMC offers distance students the possibility of participation in an online community, there is little research on what students actually feel about this. Paran (2000), for example, found that the student perspective was crucial in this respect, and that one of the reasons that students did not participate in the discussion list was their conceptualisation of learning: they saw learning as either independent or tutor led, but did not see their peers as a source of knowledge. Indeed, one of the students in that study remarked that he was interested in learning from academics, whereas discussing points with students might mean the blind were leading the blind. Another fundamental concern is expressed by Goodyear (2002, p. 51): ‘Online discussion can be a fruitful source of insights into academic ideas, but it can also appear directionless, trivial and self-indulgent’. This can be interpreted as a call for research into the validity of CMC as well as into the ways in which it is applied. Finally, there is currently little published research into the experiences of students (especially post-graduates) in CMC environments; as Hara and Kling (1999) comment, ‘. . .research on the effect of distance education has been focused on student outcomes. . . but not on the affective aspects of distance education’. An exception in our field is Teague (2001), who reports on students’ experience of synchronous and asynchronous CMC. Her initial findings suggested that even a simple discussion list ‘heightened students’ motivation to learn’. Taking these gaps in research into account, an important strand in the study described was therefore to understand the student experience of CMC within an MA TESOL context.
3. The study 3.1. Research questions For practical reasons, the study focused on one course, the MA in TEFL by Distance Study (henceforth DS) at the University of Reading. The MA in TEFL was launched in 1984, and its distance version was launched in 1997. This is an entirely distance, paper-based programme, with optional individual e-mail support. It initially included an e-mail discussion list, though by the time of the study, this had been replaced by a CMC package (WebBoard). Study time to completion on the distance programme is between two and five years; at the time of the study, there were 134 students on the course, based in 35 countries. The general aims of the study were translated into the following research questions: (a) What type of access does the target population have to computers in general and to the Internet in particular? (b) What type of computer experience and skills does the target population have?
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(c) What type of Internet experience and skills does the target population have? (d) How does the target population perceive the current provision of CMC on the course? (e) What are the CMC needs and wants of the target population? 3.2. Subjects and methodology Two methods of data collection, a postal questionnaire and face-to-face interviews, were used with students on the course. Student questionnaire: The student questionnaire (a combination of open and closed questions) was developed and piloted on face-to-face students on the MA TEFL in Reading (see Appendix A). All students on the MA TEFL by DS Programme were sent questionnaires; the return rate was 47% (63 questionnaires). Comparisons between the target population and the respondent population indicated that the respondents were largely representative of the target population in terms of age, sex and nationality. However, different percentages of students from different intakes (cohorts) responded. Student interviews: Hughes and Lewis (2002) argue that ‘studies of the effectiveness of online learning tend to generalise the student experience’. We therefore set out explicitly to focus also on individual learners. Six MA TEFL students were interviewed at the Reading campus in Summer 2001. These were Distance Study students who had come to Reading to take some modules on campus. All had used email on the course, either on the discussion list or to contact tutors, and two also had some experience of the WebBoard. Since availability was the main factor in selection, the student interviewees are not a representative sample of the group. Interview data were gathered using individual semi-structured interviews which included questions about issues identified from the responses to the questionnaire (see Appendix B).
4. Findings This section combines the findings from the interviews and the questionnaires, organised by research question. 4.1. What type of access does the population of MA TEFL by DS students have to computers in general and to the Internet in particular? On the whole, access to computers proved not to be a problem. All 63 respondents said they had regular access to a computer. 78% of them had access to a computer at home; 19% had regular access at work; 40% had access both at home and at work. Only 3% used Internet cafes for computer access. Access to the Internet was also unproblematic: 93% of respondents had access to the Internet, with 84% having daily access and the rest access 2–3 times weekly. The students without Internet access expected to have it within the next two years at most. No single factor emerged as an overriding reason inhibiting student access to the Internet for personal use. None of
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the factors investigated – time implications of Internet access and work; ease of access, cost of Internet use; cost; of a computer and lack of familiarity with the technology – were judged to be of great importance; all achieved a mean of between 3 and 3.5 on a 1–5 Likert scale where 1 was important and 5 was not important. In addition, those students who did indicate that there were problems with access did not seem to come from any particular geographical distribution. They included students living in high Internet use countries such as the UK, Switzerland, and Spain, and students in countries with low internet use such as Indonesia, Vietnam, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the Czech Republic. As Table 2 indicates, there was a wide geographical spread of respondents in general, and we can therefore safely conclude that there was no or little difference in access between those respondents living in countries of high internet and computer use and those living in countries where such use is much more limited. Having said that, specific comments on access did tend to come from countries of low internet use. For example, a student from Vietnam commented on the large
Table 2 Country of current residence of questionnaire respondents Country
No. of respondents
United Kingdom Japan UAE Italy Uruguay Spain Brazil Sweden Saudi Arabia Greece South Korea Switzerland France Argentina Austria Oman Chile Hungary Thailand Vietnam Venezuela Indonesia Singapore Portugal Netherlands Cyprus Czech Republic Croatia Pakistan
11 5 5 4 3 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
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number of firewalls and the slowness of connections there, and a student in Indonesia commented that they did not have a phone line in the kampong where they were living. 4.2. What type of computer experience and skills do MA TEFL by DS students have in general? Students were asked to self-rate their competence in computer skills. All students claimed they were experienced at using computers for word processing. When asked if they used computers for their own language teaching, however, only 8 respondents (13%) said that they did. In general, these respondents make a variety of uses of computers in their own language teaching: for their own work (e.g. material preparation, record keeping, test writing, curriculum design); for the students’ work (e.g. project work, accessing information); and for communication between teacher and student (e.g. homework discussions). 4.3. What type of Internet experience and skills do MA TEFL by DS students have? Respondents also indicated good competence at using the Internet. 97% had at least some competence at information search and retrieval. 36% had at least some competence at asynchronous discussion groups on the Internet, though only 10% had any experience of synchronous discussion. 50% of the students had some experience of using materials from the Internet and/or CD based materials to support their studies. Men (70%) rated themselves at a higher competence level than women (45%) at using the Internet. More men (50%) also rated themselves as familiar with using asynchronous conferencing than women (31%). An important consideration in materials delivery is preference for reading materials on screen or in print. Currently, students receive the materials in print, but we were interested in knowing how they would choose to read the material if it were sent to them electronically. The overwhelming majority of respondents (97%) would prefer to download materials to paper. In the interviews, most students recognised the value for their studies of using e-mail, especially its asynchronous aspect. Only one student expressed a strong dislike for the medium of e-mail. This student preferred to communicate by phone – ‘intonation tells me a lot’ – but with e-mail ‘you expect immediate response but don’t really get it, it’s sort of in between, neither writing a letter nor speaking’. She would not have chosen to do the course had there been a compulsory online element. 4.4. Use of CMC provision on the MA TEFL 4.4.1. One-to-one communication Use of e-mail to contact tutors on the programme was also discussed with the interviewees. All except one had found the use of e-mail to their personal tutor to be either quite or very helpful. One student commented that it was this aspect of their
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contact with the academic staff which had been the most useful: ‘It helped to point me in the right direction’. This included initial orientation to the course as well as asking for advice on presenting assignments. Affective factors were important for some: ‘it was helpful to be in touch, not about any assignment or anything but it helped to generate a feeling of belonging’. However, four out of the six interviewees specifically mentioned that they were uncertain about how much e-mail contact they could have with personal tutors: ‘I’m not sure how much of the tutor’s time a student can take’. This point was repeated when discussing the nature and extent of e-mail communication with teachers of specific modules. In one case a student said that she ‘was a little anxious about disturbing (the tutor) . . . I somehow felt it was inappropriate to send an ignorant e-mail to someone who was so knowledgeable about the subject, so I just didn’t make any contact at all’. She went on to say that where a tutor had initiated contact (on another module) she had felt much more comfortable and she saw ‘no reason why the tutor shouldn’t make the first move’. Other interviewees had no such qualms about initiating e-mail contact with module tutors and were generally positive about this: ‘responses were always prompt and helpful. . . This was important as it helped me to follow through a train of thought.’ Appreciation of prompt replies was a common theme: ‘with e-mail it’s got to be (prompt) hasn’t it? There’s nothing worse than waiting for an e-mail’. Most of the messages between the interviewees and their module tutors related to clarifying ideas, assignments and reading. One student expressed the view that ‘(e-mail) discussion with tutors helped me reach a standard I might not have reached otherwise and helped me feel less isolated’. Even a student who said that she chose the Distance MA course ‘knowing it would be more isolated. . . I like the autonomy’ went on to add ‘but it’s nice to know there is back up available in this form’. 4.4.2. Many-to-many communication Students in cohorts 1–6 had access to an e-mail discussion list, and in cohort 7 they had access to WebBoard, a bulletin board facility. In spite of the availability of these facilities, 44% had not made any use of the e-mail discussion list and 55% with access to the WebBoard had not used it. The only factor mentioned by a considerable number of respondents (7) was that using the facilities entailed a large time commitment. Three respondents said that they lacked sufficient skill in using the technology. Other factors, mentioned by only one or two students on the questionnaire, were worry about spending too much time at the computer screen anyway; fear of exposing ignorance in front of others; and a lack of knowledge of the use of the e-mail discussion list and WebBoard, including how to send attachments. This point was also raised in the interviews, where one interviewee said ‘I can only admit this to you because I’ve never met you before, but I don’t know how to send attachments or links to the Internet, part of my lack of use of e-mail is a lack of expertise’. Her feeling was that the course team should ‘assume people know very little and send out a simple fact sheet about how to do it. . . give them a little workshop that tells them how to do it. . . and support them if they get into difficulties’. Two of the interviewees expanded on their feelings of being inhibited in
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using the list: ‘I would like some kind of ‘warm up’ activity. . . before I did the course so that I could feel comfortable with the technology, and know that other people were listening’. Another said ‘It’s a bit daunting at first, people think its more difficult than it turns out to be. . . students starting with the technology may need their hand held a bit in the first instance, for example with sending material to the right conference’. Inhibitions were raised for academic reasons as well. One interviewee said: ‘I felt like a newcomer. . . this made me shy because I might ask something silly. It’s like going into a room with a blindfold on, a room full of highly academic people and I didn’t want to appear too silly’. Another student felt the e-mail discussion list was ‘. . .used as an arena for showing off. . . it scared the living daylights out of me, . . .so I haven’t contributed to it at all. . . because I don’t want everyone to read what I am going to write, because it’s not just my cohort, is it? It’s everybody, and I thought ‘well for most of them it’s not going to be relevant is it?’’. Commenting on the tone of some of the contributions to the discussion list, she suggested that they were too direct and she would have welcomed a suggesting rather than a directing tone. She also suggested that there should be some guidance on writing both formal and informal e-mails. This student found the short biographical data of fellow students sent to all ‘really interesting’ but felt they could be developed ‘to build up a sense of shared identity with the rest of the cohort’. Another student commented that she ‘wanted to get a feel about who else was on the course, to get a concept of the cohort . . . but it didn’t work. The list didn’t seem very interactive, but some of the discussions looked interesting even though I wasn’t doing the module’. The fact that the e-mail discussion list was open to members of all cohorts elicited different opinions. One interviewee said ‘I don’t really want to read what X from cohort 5 has to say about her dissertation, that’s of no interest to me. . . I’m not interested in cross-cohort discussion, for me I might think these are things I should be worrying about which I hadn’t thought about before. . . I wouldn’t want to be involved with great discussions because it’s a big time waster’. Another student observed that ‘I can see that (it) could be enormously helpful, but pressure of time crowds it out’, continuing ‘I work full time. . . tend to work in bursts with no regular pattern but when I am working I am usually rushing to get through the material’. On the other hand, another student stated that ‘I like to read what other students have said’; another, who wondered ‘are any others sharing the same experience or do people who have done that module have experience which they can pass on?’, reiterated this point. Yet another felt that ‘ongoing cross cohort discussion would be the most helpful’. One student reflected that ‘while some contributions (to the discussion list) have been irrelevant for me I like to know what different cohorts are doing’. Four of the interviewees felt that more use could be made of the discussion list and one of them said ‘I would have liked more discussion on the e-mail list, I posted questions but didn’t get a lot of response’. Two of the students interviewed had some experience of using the WebBoard. Referring to the ice breaker activities recommended by the Course team, which included posting a brief personal biopic on the list, another said that ‘the biopics were
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really interesting but didn’t make me feel warmer towards the others, that is to say more confident about breaking the ice. . . I didn’t know how to use the ‘thing’.’ Another student stated that he checked the discussion board once a week even though he did not participate. This student had done one module during the programme that invited contributions to a module-specific e-mail discussion list and noticed ‘that if you take the first step, then others respond’. He felt this stemmed from ‘a need to be confident and competent in using the technology to be able to be active’. Interestingly, one way in which the many-to-many provision on the course is used was reported by three of the six interviewees, who first made contact with other students on the discussion list and continued this through private e-mail exchanges and then a series of productive face-to-face meetings. 4.5. What are the CMC needs and wants of the target population? In general, the costs of a computer and Internet access do not seem to be important factors inhibiting the use of CMC for most students. However, training is: 63% of respondents said they would be more likely to use the Internet if they had more training. This was also evident in the interviews, where three of the six interviewees expressed interest in having some pre-course training in e-mail use to support their MA studies (see also Section 4.4). Students were asked to what extent it would be useful for them to have more contact with their academic tutors. On a 1–5 Likert scale (where 1 ¼ very useful), the mean score was 2; 92% of the answers were 3, 2 or 1. In many cases this was specifically linked to help with module materials, progress, and feedback on assignments: when students asked what they would like to gain from additional contact, the largest number of requests (43%) specifically requested more feedback from tutors, either about their progress generally or about their assignments. 81% of respondents expressed a willingness to share ideas with fellow students over the Internet, although there were some differences of opinion on what the benefits might be and what the priorities should be. A widely shared feeling was well expressed by one student who said that greater use of CMC would stop them ‘feeling like a castaway on a Distance Learning Island’. Of those who were not willing to get involved in this way, the two main objections concerned the extra time it would consume, and the potential loss of learner autonomy. One respondent was concerned about the possibility of plagiarism resulting from putting their ideas online. There were also mixed reactions to the possibility of doing collaborative work with other students. Six students were very interested in this, as against 21 who were not at all interested. In open ended comments on this question, most students expressed a preference for ‘flexibility and working alone’ or mentioned time constraints. There clearly was a lot of demand among questionnaire respondents for more online activity. Imaginative suggestions as to what forms this might take included making use of each other’s students for research purposes; cooperating in tracking down references; and more structured online activities to help students discuss
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module content. Two of the interviewees had suggestions for developing the use of CMC on the course, one stating that she ‘would like to have synchronous online chat for say half an hour with a pre-agreed agenda, each student to have a certain allocation’. But she was worried that ‘it’s too time consuming. I feel I should be working but I’m on the computer’. Another suggested that ‘a topic could be put forward, a controversial statement’ and discussion invited, but echoed the time concern. Compulsory online conferencing worried one interviewee who valued ‘the lack of lockstep. . . because we have different working patterns over an eight week module’. Two interviewees felt that a cafe or social chat area (available in WebBoard) would be helpful, one commenting that ‘the social getting to know everyone makes it easy to get involved in academic discussion’. Asked about other facilities which they felt could be made available online, 95% of students felt that it would be very useful or quite useful to be able to access academic materials on the Internet for further reading online, including being able to access TEFL magazines and journals on the Web. Specific suggestions were course outlines, bibliographies, online study skills, including help with issues of assignment presentation, as well as module specific discussions. There was also some interest in an unmoderated online chat facility for students.
5. Discussion 5.1. Overview of findings Before we discuss our overall conclusions, we must acknowledge the caveats attached to this study. The first, obvious limitation of our work is that it looks at students who have already embarked on a Distance Study course, and are thus a selfselected group. There is further self-selection involved in returning the questionnaire, and these processes may have influenced our findings. A further limitation is the numbers: we have looked at students from only one university, with a limited number of respondents (though within this limitation we have been able to collect data from a fairly large percentage of students.) This also means that each country is represented by a small number of subjects, making cross-country comparisons unreliable. In addition, we do not have any baseline data about our students before they embarked on the course, and the student views we discuss above may have been partly influenced by the educational experience on the programme. We did not probe into the students’ conceptualisations of and attitudes towards learning, though some of this emerged in the interviews. This study sought to find out how students perceive CMC use in the context of a whole programme. In general, we found that for our target population of ELT professionals worldwide, access to computers and to the Internet was widespread. Thus our students seem to be on the fortunate side of the digital divide we discussed at the beginning of this paper, despite the fact that Internet access is not a requirement of the programme. However, while our students were experienced in word
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processing, emailing and Internet use, only a minority had any expertise of on-line discussion groups. The male–female differentiation with regard to perceived competence is also interesting and corroborates previous findings about the sex divide (see Warschauer, 1999). A number of factors suggest themselves to explain the rather limited use of the CMC tools provided on the programme. Time constraints, rather than access, are clearly a major factor here and these will remain an issue where CMC is an optional add-on to any programme. Although we are unable to make direct comparisons, the pattern of responses suggests that of the three possible sources for interaction – learning resources, tutors, and peers – the subjects in this study prefer the first two. They do not seem to view the other learners on the course as a very powerful source for interaction. The conceptualisation of learning that they have is still quite strongly focused on the tutor (see Section 4.4), and although students expressed a willingness to share ideas with fellow students, they nevertheless seemed to be more positive about contact with tutors. 5.2. Learner training One factor which has emerged as important in our students’ eyes is the issue of training. This tallies with Salmon’s (2000) five stage model of teaching and learning online using CMC, where, in the first step ‘access and motivation’, students set up the system and access it, and in the second step, ‘online socialisation’, students send and receive messages and tutors help learners to become familiar with the learning environment. During this second stage the tutor is also helping learners build bridges between cultural, social and learning environments, and it is probably at this second stage that one could deal with the fear which some of our subjects expressed of exposing their ignorance in a public forum. In the following stages, students experience and work on information exchange (Stage 3); engage in knowledge construction (Stage 4) and finally take control of their own development and learning (Stage 5). Learner training in the initial two stages is vital to making students comfortable with the technology and able to use it to their advantage. From our findings, however, students very clearly need to be socialised into an understanding of learning which values the contributions made by fellow students, and in which they are expected to contribute. There is some indication in the students’ views quoted above that they still view knowledge as originating in the teacher, or as constructed by them in communication with the tutors. It seems that they do not see the value of knowledge construction with their peers. This suggests that in addition to receiving training in the technical aspects of a course, learner training should also focus on the ways in which collaboration can be beneficial. The benefits of collaboration may be seen as alleviating time constraints by dividing up the work; insights into situations that an individual student might not encounter personally; developing thinking through discussion and collaboration. If these goals are made explicit to students, resistance to collaborative work should be reduced. How can the course team change such attitudes? Doing this probably entails thinking in two directions. One is making online work compulsory. This would
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mean that students would not perceive such work as a waste of time, but rather as part of the course. Where ‘attendance’ on online contributions is monitored, or where assessment requires reflection on a student’s own contributions to a discussion (see below), it is more likely that students will attempt to contribute something. 5.3. Type of task Much of the training discussed above can also be linked to the type of task which the learner engages in. Tasks that are too open ended, too early on in the course, are not likely to encourage students to participate. Structured activities which are managed by the e-moderator are more likely to result in interaction and pushing learners. Sample tasks may include the following: • comparing classroom data with each other; • jigsaw tasks where each student has different information; • reaching agreed solutions to problems posed by tutors; • jigsaw tasks where each student is responsible for a different aspect of the work; • collaborating on a project where students self-assign to different tasks. 5.4. Structural differentiation in programmes The activities listed above, however, take any programme quite far away from the way in which the e-mail discussion list described above was conceived. Courses which require collaborative work entail a very different conception of learning not only on the part of the student, but also on the part of the tutors and the programme. The structure of the MA TEFL by DS at the University of Reading does not require collaborative work; any collaboration between students is voluntary, and is discussion-based rather than task-based. Implementing tasks like the ones outlined above would therefore result in a different type of programme. A different way of achieving greater participation is to make online contributions and reactions to the work of others compulsory; students then submit their best pieces for inclusion in an assessed portfolio of work. Obviously, there will always be students who may not wish to work in this way, and for them other types of course may prove more successful (see Paran, 2002 for a discussion of these issues).
6. Conclusion This study was motivated partly by the belief that low student participation in an online component of an MA degree by Distance Study was largely affected by issues of access and the digital divide. Contrary to our expectations, this was not the case. There are many reasons why such students do not interact with each other online. Foremost among these is the time factor and the perception of lack of added value through this type of participation. Students see online interaction with tutors as being more advantageous, and in order to broaden the base of students prepared to
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engage with others in co-construction of knowledge, programme leaders may need to devote more thought to learner training and to a restructuring of the programme.
Appendix A. Student questionnaire Note: In the interest of space, only questions that are reported in this article are listed below. Questions 1–6: Demographic details 7. Do you have regular access to a computer? Yes
No
8. Is this access At home
At work?
Other – please specify
9. Does the computer you use most often have a modem to connect to the Internet? Yes
No
10. How do you rate your computer skills? a. Word processing
b. Information search and retrieval on the Internet (using search engines)
c. Asynchronous discussion groups
d. Synchronous online chat (participants are online at the same time as each other)
Never Used Some competence Competent High competence Never Used
Some competence Competent High competence Never Used Some competence Competent High competence Never Used
Some competence Competent High competence
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11. Is access to the Internet available to you Daily?
2–3 times a week?
Less than this?
12. If you do not have access to the Internet at present, do you expect to have Internet access In the next year? In the next three years?
In the next two years? Do not know.
13. If you are not able to access the Internet regularly for personal use what are the factors inhibiting you? For each factor please indicate its importance to you where 1 is very important and 5 is not at all important. Cost of a computer? Costs of using the Internet? Ease of access ? It is too time consuming? Lack of familiarity with the technology?
1 1 1 1 1
2 2 2 2 2
3 3 3 3 3
4 4 4 4 4
5 5 5 5 5
Other – please specify: 16. Have you ever used materials from a CD Rom or the Internet for your academic studies? Yes
No
17. If not, please indicate briefly why not. 18. If your answer to Question 16 was yes, how easy do you find using such materials? Very easy Not at all easy
Quite easy
19. If MA TEFL programme materials, currently only available in print, were to be made available to you online, how would you choose to use them? Would you a. Prefer to download materials on to paper for your studies? Yes
No
b. Prefer reading materials on the screen? Yes
No
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20. How useful would it be to have access to academic materials, e.g. online lectures, research articles, links to relevant websites, via the Internet? Please rate 1 – 5 where 1 is very useful, 5 is no use at all. 1 – very useful
2
3
4
5 – not useful at all
21. How useful would it be to you to have more frequent contact with your tutors over the Internet? 1 – very useful
2
3
4
5 – not useful at all
22. Please indicate which aspects you would find helpful (e.g. sharing notes, discussing ideas and/or problems with your fellow students, commenting on each other’s work, etc.) 23. Would you be prepared to share your comments on different components of the course with fellow students in an online course conference? Yes
No
24. How interested would you be in working on collaborative projects with your fellow students (e.g. working together to produce a group answer to specific tasks in the course materials, or conducting a survey and pooling the results, etc.?) 25. Would you like any other facilities related to your course to be available to you on line, e.g. e-mail feedback from your tours about your progress, more opportunity to chat with fellow students in a social area unmoderated by your tutors, module specific discussions? Yes
No
26. Please specify which of these facilities appeal to you, or add any others you feel may be of use. 27. Do you make use of computers in your language teaching? Yes
No
29. If you do use computers in your language teaching, what do you use them for? 30. Have you used the e-mail discussion facility? Yes
No
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31. If the answer to the previous question is yes, how helpful have you found this support to your studies? Very helpful Quite helpful Not at all helpful 32. If you have not made use of the e-mail support facility, please explain why not. (Questions 33–38 were similar to questions 30–32, relating to the use of WebBoard). 39. If you have any other comments about how using the Internet might help you on an academic course such as the MA in TEFL then please add them here or over the page.
Appendix B. Semi-structured interview schedule for students How much have you used e-mail to specific tutors on the modules that you take? Did you find a difference in e-mail use patterns between different modules? How much do you use the discussion list? What patterns do you think you can identify in your e-mail use during the course? What did you use the discussion list for? What would make it easier for you to use the e-mail discussion list? What made you decide whether to e-mail a tutor or e-mail the discussion list? Can you give examples of helpful tutor behaviour on the discussion list? Can you give examples of unhelpful tutor behaviour on the discussion list? Can you give examples of helpful student behaviour on the discussion list? Can you give examples of unhelpful student behaviour on the discussion list? Can you give an example of something you learnt from e-mail which you could not have learned otherwise?
References Bates, A.W., 1993. Theory and practice in the use of technology in distance education. In: Keegan, D. (Ed.), Theoretical Principles in Distance Education. Routledge, London, pp. 133–213. Bates, A.W., 1995. Technology, Open Learning and Distance Education. Routledge, London. Chickering, A.W., Ehrmann, S.C., 1997. Implementing the Seven Principles: Technology as Lever. Available from
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Goodyear, P., 2002. Psychological foundations for networked learning. In: Steeples, C., Jones, C. (Eds.), Networked Learning: Perspectives and Issues. Springer, London, pp. 49–75. Hara, N., Kling, R., 1999. Students’ Frustrations with a Web-Based Distance Education Course. First Monday, vol. 4, number 12. Available from