Think again! Transformative online pedagogy and the student who says ‘I am uncomfortable communicating with unknown people online’

Roy, James (2019). Think again! Transformative online pedagogy and the student who says ‘I am uncomfortable communicating with unknown people online’. In: ICDE: World Conference on Online Learning 2019, 3-7 Nov 2019, Dublin, Ireland.

Abstract

The Open University in the UK is open to all, regardless of previous education qualifications or experiences – since 1969, we have defined the expansion of access and openness in higher education delivering supported distance learning at large scale. In 2016, I led a scholarship project, which surveyed both undergraduate and postgraduate students to explore students’ experiences of using online forums, our main asynchronous online tuition tool. 429 student responses were received, amounting to 58,500 words and 134 pages of student voice data, with the common recurring theme across all Levels – a deep anxiety and nervousness about posting to online student forums, as shown in the following words ‘It made me very anxious and self-conscious’ (S91: Level 1) and ‘I felt I was publicising how stupid I really am’ (S186: Level 3).

To be open, accessible and inclusive, transformative online pedagogy needs to hear online distance learners’ views and radically shake up naive assumptions that underpin our thinking around online pedagogy. To responsively enhance how we ‘do’ transformative online pedagogy we need to clearly acknowledge that any student may feel nervous, anxious, or afraid of posting online to strangers -> we need to reassure, not patronise, students. Encouragement to ‘engage’ and ‘get stuck in’ needs to be realistic underpinned by an understanding of the challenges for students. And, very importantly, we need to accept that some students will prefer to read-only, and we need to allow and acknowledge thinking time – rather than a ‘blanket’ you-must-get-involved-or-else, or a ‘do-it-cos-it’s-good-for-you’ approach!

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About

• Item ORO ID
• 88142
• Item Type
• Conference or Workshop Item
• Project Funding Details

• Funded Project Name	Project ID	Funding Body
  Not Set	Not Set	The Open University (OU)

• Keywords
• online learning; forums; pedagogy; distance learning; anxiety; anxious students; higher education; transformative; online; learner; diversity; inclusion
• Academic Unit or School
• Faculty of Wellbeing, Education and Language Studies (WELS) > Education, Childhood, Youth and Sport
  Faculty of Wellbeing, Education and Language Studies (WELS)
• Research Group
• Childhood and Youth
  Children Young People and Families
  Children's Research Centre (CRC)
  Education
  PRAXIS
  Pedagogy and Learning (PAL)
• Depositing User
• James Roy