Secondary Students’ Perceptions of Web-Based Learning Free

There has been much written about the benefits and challenges of virtual schooling at an institutional level (e.g., Berge & Clark, 2005; Kellogg & Politoski, 2002; Zucker & Kozma, 2003). However, most of this literature has been based on the experiences of those engaged in the delivery of virtual school opportunities. While there has been little actual research conducted on the benefits and challenges from a virtual school student perspective, research literature at the postsecondary level indicate that scholars have begun to study these issues with adult populations in online learning environments.

At the postsecondary level, a number of recent studies have explored student perceptions of the strengths and weaknesses in online learning environments. Petrides (2002) interviewed students in a one-semester course that used a Web-based learning system as a supplement to their classroom meetings. She found that students enjoyed the ability to reflect on other students’ contributions to the asynchronous discussion forum. This was similar to Vonderwell (2003), who found that students in her interview study indicated that the asynchronous discussion forum provided an opportunity to express themselves more carefully. Barbour and Collins (2005), in their 3-year study of asynchronous discussion forums in two elective science courses, suggested that the process of carefully crafted writing about a topic led to better mastery of the content.

Another strength of online learning at the postsecondary level is the flexibility that can be offered (Schrum, 2002). Chizmar and Walbert (1999) found that students enjoyed the ability to pick and choose from a variety of learning experiences offered to them and felt that it allowed them to select the one that was most suitable to their own learning style. Another aspect of flexibility found by Petrides (2002) was that students indicated that working in groups was easier because they were not tied to the specific scheduled time that a face-to-face class would normally offer. Similar to the issue of flexibility, convenience was also a strength of online learning at the postsecondary level. Students involved in a discussion-oriented online course described by Poole (2002), for example, stated that they appreciated the convenience of being able to participate at times and in locations that were convenient to them. Murphy and Collins (1997) also found that participants reported enjoying being able to participate asynchronously, when it was convenient to the student. Further, students in two business courses through the Michigan Virtual University indicated that the ease of use and organization of learning materials were perceived as strengths of their online learning experience (Smart & Cappel, 2006).

In terms of the weaknesses of online learning perceived by students at the postsecondary level, the time it took for students to receive feedback from instructors was seen as a common weakness. Petrides (2002) found student complaints about the lack of immediacy in receiving feedback from their online instructor compared to what they would have received in a classroom-based environment, particularly when using e-mail and the asynchronous discussion forum. The students described in Vonderwell (2003) were more direct in their criticism on this issue, stating that “it might take hours, maybe a day or so before you get an answer back for the question” (p. 84). This was consistent with the findings reported in Hara and Kling (1999), who conducted case studies of students taking a Web-based course, and found that students felt frustrated with the time it took to receive feedback.

A sense of isolation or a lack of community is another weakness identified with online learning at the postsecondary level. Vonderwell (2003) reported that while students felt some sense of familiarity with the instructor, they didn’t feel as if they really knew him. Woods (2002) indicated that in addition to feeling isolated from the instructor, online learners typically feel isolated from other students in the course as well. This may explain Petrides’ (2002) finding that students questioned the level of expertise that their colleagues possessed. Smart and Cappel (2006) also found that students felt that there needed to be more detailed directions for activities and assignments given in their online environment.

However, one of the difficulties with this line of inquiry, even at the postsecondary level, is that many research studies of Web-based instruction were “anecdotal [rather] than systematically empirical or critical” (Hara & Kling, 1999). While some of the research that has been conducted would stand up to Hara’s and Kling’s criticism (e.g., Cereijo, Young & Wilhelm, 2002; Hartley & Bendixen, 2001; Hill, 2002; and other examples discussed above), there is a need for more intensive research studies on the difficulties in providing high quality Web-based instruction, pedagogical strategies to promote students’ online learning experience, and the impact of learner characteristics on learner’s Web-based learning experience (Hartley & Bendixen, 2001; Hara & Kling, 1999, 2001; Cereijo et al., 2002). This is particularly true at the K-12 level, where even less systematic research has been published.

This current study was a part of a larger initiative by an online learning research group at the University of Georgia. Prior versions of this study have been undertaken with postsecondary students (i.e., Song, Singleton, Hill, & Koh, 2003; Singleton et al., 2004) and with corporate Web-based trainees in the United States and in South Korea (i.e., Jones, Koh, Hill, & Singleton, 2004a, 2004b, 2004c, 2004d). The postsecondary version of this study was conducted over a 2-year period and included 138 participants from a large southern university. The corporate Web-based training version of this study was conducted over a 1-year period and included 58 participants from a major global corporation in the United States and 59 participants from a different major global corporation in South Korea.

This study was a continuation of this line of inquiry with a population of secondary school students in a provincewide virtual school in Canada. To guide this study, the researcher focused on two primary research questions:

1. What virtual school learning components do secondary students recognize as helpful in the learning process?

2. What virtual school components do secondary students recognize as challenging?

As in the previous studies, the researcher utilized surveys as the primary method of data collection. According to Bartlett (2005), surveys are a frequently used method of data collection for assessing things that are not necessarily observable, such as student perceptions. The online learning experiences survey that was used was a modified version of the survey that had been used in the previous studies to be more applicable to a virtual high school audience (see Appendix A). The modifications that were made were due to the differences in the distance education technologies that were being used and the differences in the nature of the adolescent audience. For example, the potential responses for the question “Which of the following technologies did you use while of taking Web-based courses?” would have been changed to include all of the technologies that were available within the students’ virtual high school context. Another example was the changes to the demographic questions asked of students.

The virtual high school audience selected for this study were students that had completed at least one course through the Centre for Distance Learning and Innovation (CDLI) in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. The province, located on the east coast of Canada, has both an island and mainland portions with a total area of approximately 250,000 square miles, has a population of approximately 510,000 people. The majority of the roughly 300 schools are located in these rural communities and approximately one third have been determined as necessarily existent (i.e., when a school is located so far from another school that it makes busing the students impractical due to distance). As with most rural areas, many of these do not have ample numbers of teachers and are unable to offer many aspects of the provincially mandated curriculum. After a history of using distance education, both audiographics and Web-based systems to address the curriculum opportunity gap that existed in rural schools, the CDLI began in 2001-02 with 10 Web-based courses piloted with 200 student enrolments from 76 different schools. By the 2004-05 school year, the CDLI had expanded to 35 courses and 1,500 student enrolments from 95 different schools (Government of Newfoundland, 2004). The delivery model utilized by the CDLI is a combination of asynchronous instruction using a content management system, and synchronous instruction using a virtual classroom.

All four English-speaking school districts in the province agreed to allow their schools to participate, and 18 schools, representing all four districts, agreed to circulate the surveys to their students. A total of 38 rural school students completed the survey between February and May 2005. Compared with 76 and 62 post-secondary participants over 2 years, and with 58 and 59 corporate participants, this was a lower response rate than the research group had experienced in previous studies. The issue of nonresponse in survey research has been on the rise in recent years, as there has been a general increase in the amount of survey research being conducted (Atrostic, Bates, Burt & Silberstein, 2001; Baruch, 1999; de Heer, 1999). This could easily be true with students enrolled in the Centre for Distance Learning and Innovation, as the faculty of education at the province’s only university has created both a master’s degree in educational technology and a doctoral degree in education in the past 8 years. Further, while many provinces have provincewide virtual schools, Newfoundland and Labrador is one of only two provinces (the other is New Brunswick) where the province-wide option is the only option available to students.

Of the 38 participants, 68% were female and 29% were male (with one student who did not respond to this question). Most of the students had completed two or more courses, with 42% having taken only one course and 13% having taken five or more courses. The largest number of student participants were Grade 12 students (47%), with 26% being in Grade 11 and 24% being in Grade 10 (one participant did not respond to the question).

Overall, students were generally satisfied with their virtual schooling experience. When asked if they were satisfied with taking virtual school courses, 86.8% indicated that they were satisfied. Further, when asked if they were satisfied with all of their experiences in their virtual school courses, only 5.3% selected either of the two dissatisfaction options (i.e., 1 or 2 on the 5-point Likert scale). This was consistent with the low number of students (7.9%) who indicated that they were less satisfied with their virtual school courses compared to their classroom-based courses. In fact, 63.2% of students indicated they were more satisfied with their virtual school courses. This is a little surprising, given that 50% of students stated that their virtual school courses were more difficult than their classroom-based courses.

Students reported spending between 3 and 6 hours working on each of their virtual school courses each week. In addition, only 10.5% of the students indicated that they could access the Internet at home, while 34.2% said they could access the Internet at a public library and 76.3% could access the Internet at a friend’s home—although it is not clear whether they would access their virtual school course(s) from these locations, as students were not asked this specific question. Finally, 81.6% stated that the reason they took the course through the virtual school was because it was the only way the course was offered, 47.4% wanted to try a virtual school course, and 26.3% of the students indicated the course they took was a required course (n.b., students were able to select more than one response).

In terms of useful tools in their virtual school courses, students indicated that e-mail and the virtual classroom were the two most useful tools used by or with their teacher (see Table 1).

Interestingly, students also reported some challenges in using many of these tools, with 24% experiencing some difficulty with the audio clips, 21% with the discussion forum and file transfer protocol, 18% with the video clips, and 16% with the interactive items and the virtual classroom.

In addition to some difficulties with the tools, students also encountered other problems while taking their virtual school courses. The main problems, based upon their responses, included technical issues such as those described with the tools, lack of time, and difficulty understanding goals or objectives (see Table 2).

While it wasn’t a listed option, it is interesting to note that students did not add a lack of home Internet access in the “Other” field. They did use this field to indicate three problems in addition to the choices listed, and only 1 in 10 students reported having access to the Internet from home.

When asked which factors were important for success in a virtual school course, students had a high level of agreement with all of the suggestions listed in the survey (see Table 3).

While the mean is high for each of these factors, it should be noted that a third to more than two thirds of the students selected “Very Important” for all of the factors, and only a small percentage of students selected “Not Important” for any of the factors (with five of the eight receiving no responses of “Not Important”). Interestingly, the two highest percentage selections for the “very important” response were for “time management of the student” and “motivation of the student”—both characteristics of self-directed learning traditionally attributed to adult learners.

As this study was the fifth sample of participants to have completed this survey, there are a number of comparisons that can be made between the different groups (see Tables 4, 5, 6 and 7 for complete results from these other studies). For example, the secondary students found the virtual classroom to be the most helpful tool, which was consistent with the corporate population from South Korea. By contrast, the American corporate population rated their virtual classroom as the least helpful tool, and this tool was not even used with the two post-secondary populations (see Table 4).

The secondary students also rated e-mail as a highly helpful tool, which was consistent with the views of the American corporate and the two postsecondary populations (which is contradictory to Petrides’ (2002) and Vonderwell’s (2003) claims that postsecondary students were dissatisfied with the length of time required for e-mail interactions). The postsecondary students also thought highly of the flexibility and convenience offered by online learning, neither of which was raised by the secondary students in this study (Song et al., 2003).

In comparing the results of this study with earlier studies conducted by this research group, Jones et al. (2004a) found that corporate trainees in the United States indicated that e-mail, video, discussions forums, and audio were their most useful tools, while South Korean corporate trainees indicated the virtual classroom, audio, video, and discussion forums were their most useful tools (see Table 5).

Two of the four most useful tools identified by the secondary students in this study were the same as both of these groups: e-mail and discussion forums with the United States trainees and the virtual classroom and discussion forums with the South Korean trainees. It should be noted, however, that audio and video were in the four most helpful tools for both groups of trainees, but were at the bottom of the list for the secondary students.

In terms of problems encountered, there was a higher degree of consistency between the secondary students, the postsecondary students, and at least one group of corporate trainees. The main problem identified by all of these groups was the presence of technical problems. The only group that wasn’t consistent with this trend was the South Korean corporate trainees, who indicated that the lack of a sense of community was their number one challenge. The lack of a sense of community was also the second most identified problem with the postsecondary students, particularly with those who were novice learners and those learners who were dissatisfied with their online learning experience (Singleton et al, 2004); however, this was not a concern shared by the secondary students.

The secondary students’ concern about difficulty understanding goals and objectives was consistent with sentiments expressed by students in a study by Smart and Cappel (2006) about the lack of detailed directions for activities and assignments, but this was not reflected in the population of postsecondary students examined earlier by our research group (Singleton et al, 2004). Also, concerns about the immediacy of responses from the instructor or the lack of a sense of community were only minor concerns to the secondary students compared to some of the other populations.

When examining the factors learners felt were important for success in the various Web-based environments, there was also a high degree of consistency between the populations included in the various studies conducted by our research group.

In fact, all four groups of learners ranked “well organized content” near the top of the most important factors necessary for success, with the postsecondary students and both groups of corporate trainees ranking it as the highest factor and the secondary students ranking it as the second highest factor. In follow-up interviews conducted with the corporate trainees, the issues of time management and motivation were also found to be important factors. These factors were rated as the third and fourth most important factors by the postsecondary students, while the secondary students ranked them as the most and third most important, respectively. It is not surprising to see these factors high on the list with the three adult populations, as these characteristics are commonly associated with the nature of independent or self-directed learning—a skill necessary for engaging in studying at a distance according to Moore (1972, 1973, 1983, 1993; Moore & Kearsley, 1996). It should be noted that, due to the lack of variance in responses to the question that asked what factors were important for success in a virtual school course, this was an important area to address in the interview study that followed this investigation. Finally, the secondary students and both corporate populations rated exercises, quizzes, and tutor feedback at the bottom of the most important factors.

Cognitive psychologists, such as Piaget and Vygotsky, have argued that the ability of adolescents to learn in independent learning environments is less than that of adult learners because of differences in their development. However, the reality of the challenges being faced by rural schools forces more and more secondary school students into these independent learning environments. What is probably best illustrated by this initial study of secondary student perceptions of the helpful and challenging characteristics of learning in this type of environment is the consistency in the views on which factors are the important for success between the secondary students and the various adult populations. While there were slight differences in the tools that secondary students found useful and challenging compared to their adult counterparts, how to best situate themselves for success remains relatively the same—ensure that learners are provided with well designed and organized content, along with providing them the time management and motivational skills to be able to work effectively in this independent environment.

While many adult learners may already possess these skills, based upon most cognitive development theories many adolescent learners probably do not (Cavanaugh, Gillan, Kromrey, Hess, & Blomeyer, 2004). This means that more will need to be done at the secondary school, and even middle school level, to prepare students for learning in these environments (Rice, 2006; Roblyer, 2005). This is particularly true in rural jurisdictions, where many students do not have a choice as to whether or not to enroll in these virtual school courses because this is the only means they have to access these courses.

Future research needs to begin to address the issue of what constitutes a well-designed and well-organized Web-based course for an adolescent learner. As has been illustrated in this study, the useful tools that work for adult learner, and the areas that adult learners find necessary in their online learning, may not be appropriate for an adolescent audience. More studies need to be conducted on what components of Web-based design secondary students find useful for their learning (Roblyer & Elbaum, 2000). In addition to issues of design, additional research should be conducted on how to evaluate the level of self-directed learning skills that secondary students possess and how we can provide opportunities for them to strengthen areas of weakness prior to engaging in independent learning opportunities such as virtual schooling (Roblyer & Marshall, 2002-2003). With the continued proliferation of these opportunities for students in secondary schools, and even in middle and elementary schools, the practice of virtual schooling is far outpacing the constructive research being conducted. This should be corrected before virtual school opportunities become something that only students who already possess these self-directed learning skills are able to access.

• 1. How many Web-based courses have you completed? ________________________________

• 2. Were you satisfied with all of your experiences in these Web-based courses?

• 3. How difficult were your Web-based courses in general compared to face-to-face course?

• 4. Are you satisfied with your experience in these Web-based courses as compared to learning in a face-to-face course?

• 5. Which of the following technologies did you use while of taking Web-based courses? Circle all that apply.

• 6. How did the following tools help you in your Web-based courses? Circle the most appropriate response.

• 7. Which of the following Internet tools did you find challenging in your web-based studies? Circle all that apply.

• 8. What problems have you encountered while taking Web-based courses? Check all that apply.

  • __ lack of adequate Internet knowledge

  • __ can’t find the information I need in order to be successful

  • __ lack of time

  • __ technical problems

  • __ lack of sense of community

  • __ difficulty understanding goals/objectives of the course

  • __ other (please list as many as applicable):

• 9. Why did you decide to take an online course? Check all that apply.

  • __ convenience (I don’t have to travel to school)

  • __ this is the only way it is offered

  • __ I wanted to try a Web-based course

  • __ a required course

  • __ other

• 10. How did you learn about your Web-based course?

  • __ from the class schedule

  • __ from an instructor

  • __ from a friend

  • __ other (how?)

• 11. Overall, I am satisfied with taking Web-based courses.

  • __ Yes

  • __ No

• 12. Which factors are important for success in a Web-based course? Circle the appropriate response.

• 13. Where do you access the Internet?

  • __ School

  • __ Home

  • __ Friend’s home

  • __ Library (public or university)

  • __ Internet café

  • __ Other (please list):

  • ________________________

• 14. How many hours did you spend on your online courses over the period of a week (7 days)?

  • __ Less than 2 hours

  • __ 3-6 hours

  • __ 7-10 hours

  • __ 11-14 hours

  • __ More than 15 hours

• 15. What is your gender?

  • __ Female

  • __ Male

• 16. What is your grade?

  • __ Grade 9

  • __ Level I

  • __ Level II

  • __ Level III

  • __ Level IV

• 17. What is your age?

  • __ 15

  • __ 16

  • __ 17

  • __ 18

  • __ 19

  • __ Over 19

• 18. Are you willing to participate in a follow-up interview?

  • __ Yes (please provide your name and e-mail address below).

  • __ No

Name: _________________________________________________________________________

E-mail: ________________________________________________________________________