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Student perceptions of learning environments.

Article Excerpt
Abstract

To meet the needs of today's emerging tech-savvy, time-crunched students, professors face the challenge of creating psychosocial learning environments that incorporate distance instruction, as well as maintaining their traditional instruction. In order to serve this population, student perceptions of online learning environments need to be considered during course development and implementation. This small-scale study compared perceptions from students in a face-to-face, hybrid, and distance-delivered version of the same social work course and found distance education falling short when compared to other delivery methods.

Introduction

Distance education is changing the face of higher education. "As distance education becomes more prevalent, higher education has attempted to meet the growing demand for courses, curriculum, and programs offered at a distance" (Lindner, Dooley, & Murphy, 2001, p. 25). While research on the technological aspects of distance education is readily available, there is limited research in identifying interpersonal dynamics within the distance education environment (Walker & Fraser, 2005), and no research in particular on graduate-level social work students' perceptions of distance education. Studies on distance education tend to focus mainly on instructors' activities, such as satisfaction and teaching methods, and on student outcomes, such as achievement, grades, and test scores (Walker, 2002). Further, in distance education, most studies focus on learning, and only about one-third of those are research based (Murphy & Cifuentes, 2001). To bridge the gap between face-to-face teaching and learning and quality distance education, students' points of view need to be studied in order to understand the psychological, social, and technical obstacles they face (Wilcott, 1994). When determinants of psychosocial educational components are better understood, instructors then have opportunities to make changes in their distance-based classes in order to improve the distance learning environment, and thus the learning outcomes, of their distance education students.

This study addresses student perceptions of the online psychosocial learning environment. Psychosocial involves students' interactions with their environment, which includes dynamics of their involvement with other students and with the instructor, and their thinking related to how the environment influences what they do, or do not do, in class. In distance education, the dynamics of student interactions are much different than those found in traditional face-to-face classrooms. There are no social, economic, or race barriers that enter a "computer classroom." The binding factor is typically access to a computer. Further, social learning opportunities, often taken...