WCET14 Student Panel: What do students think of online education?

Yesterday at the WCET14 conference in Portland I had the opportunity along with Pat James to moderate a student panel. ((Pat is the executive director of the California Community College Online Education Initiative (OEI) – see her blog here for program updates.)) I have been trying to encourage conference organizers to include more opportunities to let students speak for themselves – becoming real people with real stories rather than nameless aggregations of assumptions. WCET stepped up with this session. And my new favorite tweet ((I’m not above #shameless.)):

@kuriousmind @lukedowden @wcet_info @PhilOnEdTech Best. Panel. Ever. Massively insightful experience.

— Matthew L Prineas (@mprineas) November 20, 2014

As I called out in my introduction, we talk about students, we characterize students, we listen to others talk about students, but we don’t do a good job in edtech talking with students.  There is no way that a student panel can be representative of all students, even for a single program or campus ((As can be seen from this monochromatic panel, which might make sense for Portland demographics but not from a nationwide perspective.)). We’re not looking for statistical answers, but we can hear stories and gain understanding.

These four students were either working adults (and I’m including a stay-at-home mom in this category) taking undergraduate online programs. They were quite well-spoken and self-aware, which made for a great conversation that included comments that might surprise some on faculty-student interaction potential:

A very surprising (to me) comment on class size:

And specific feedback on what doesn’t work well in online courses:

To help with viewing of the panel, here are the primary questions / topics of discussion:

• Introduction of session 0:00
• Introduction of students – their stories 8:56
• Describe a typical week of doing classwork 23:44
• Flexibility of online courses to fit their schedules 32:05
• Difference in course experiences based on teacher 36:38
• Use of mobile, or not 40:04
• Faculty-student and student-student interaction 43:03
• Support outside of the courses 49:00
• Advice for other students 51:32
• Advice for faculty 55:27
• Expectation of faculty response time 57:15
• Class size 59:00
• What doesn’t work on course experience 1:00:45
• How active should faculty be in discussions 1:02:50
• Need for synchronous conversation 1:06:20
• Flexibility in course pace, weekly deadlines 1:08:33
• Ability to help others see benefits 1:11:48

The whole student panel is available on the Mediasite platform:

Thanks to the help of the Mediasite folks, I have also uploaded a Youtube video of the full panel: