1. do you find my conclusion – that institutions can feel confident about exploring the use of on-line forms of tutorial support – a convincing one?
My only concern here was that these courses were presented in both formats – so the students were self selecting. Thus those who felt more confident with ICT would chose the on-line offering and those who were not would opt out.
The case study by Price involved a course which had changed format and for which there was in latter presentation no choice for the student. Therefore there was no degree of self-selection as the comparison was between the f2f course before the transition to on-line and the on-line presentation.
I take the point about the multidisciplinary nature of the course in Price but I wonder if the lack of significant differences between cohorts in the Richardson (2009) study may be due to the fact that the students who are not comfortable on-line were not enrolled on that version of the course.
2. How do the accounts given in these two papers fit with your own experience of on-line tutorial support in H800?
We are of course a self-selecting group of students who expect to work extensively on-line and either have or expect to need to learn the necessary skills. As a post-graduate course it might be expected that students would be far more self supporting than undergraduates and have more confidence in ourselves in attempting new skills.
I’m not sure that comparing a post-graduate course that has been explicitly designed from the ground up with on-line delivery in mind with an undergraduate one that has been ‘converted’ from a f2f course is necessarily going to be useful.
The use of forums for discussion has been useful in exchanging views with other students. The Elluminate tutorial and student sessions have been very helpful – but are not comparable with my experience of tutorials using Forums in First Class which I have always found disappointing (and which the students complain about as unhelpful and difficult to use)
Reading Richardson (2009)
1. do you find my conclusion – that institutions can feel confident about exploring the use of on-line forms of tutorial support – a convincing one?
My only concern here was that these courses were presented in both formats – so the students were self selecting. Thus those who felt more confident with ICT would chose the on-line offering and those who were not would opt out.
The case study by Price involved a course which had changed format and for which there was in latter presentation no choice for the student. Therefore there was no degree of self-selection as the comparison was between the f2f course before the transition to on-line and the on-line presentation.
I take the point about the multidisciplinary nature of the course in Price but I wonder if the lack of significant differences between cohorts in the Richardson (2009) study may be due to the fact that the students who are not comfortable on-line were not enrolled on that version of the course.
2. How do the accounts given in these two papers fit with your own experience of on-line tutorial support in H800?
We are of course a self-selecting group of students who expect to work extensively on-line and either have or expect to need to learn the necessary skills. As a post-graduate course it might be expected that students would be far more self supporting than undergraduates and have more confidence in ourselves in attempting new skills.
I’m not sure that comparing a post-graduate course that has been explicitly designed from the ground up with on-line delivery in mind with an undergraduate one that has been ‘converted’ from a f2f course is necessarily going to be useful.
The use of forums for discussion has been useful in exchanging views with other students. The Elluminate tutorial and student sessions have been very helpful – but are not comparable with my experience of tutorials using Forums in First Class which I have always found disappointing (and which the students complain about as unhelpful and difficult to use)