Page 113 - Cyberculture and New Media

104 The Challenge of Intercultural Electronic Learning
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Thus, the general perception remains that a sense of belonging to the
team is essential for the quality of online learning.
On the other hand, as indicated, learning in online settings is often
accompanied with dissatisfaction:

My first experience in a virtual learning context was that
my own language (English, not mother tongue but usually
quite easily spoken) changed. I felt very clumsy and
staggering around. Then I realized that it wasn’t the
language but the setting making me somehow insecure. I
thought that it was about the division between written and
spoken language. When I write in online situations I feel
that I need to be fast and sharp. If I write ‘on my own’ my
metaphors, my sentences my ‘style’ is different. Being and
writing online my language is ‘strange’, it differs from
other situations.

Further, the limitations of online learning are highlighted: some
students favour its convenience (“anytime-anywhere-24/7 possibilities”),
others feel dissatisfied (“time consuming”, “too much work”, “the tempo is
very high”), frustrated (“I feel lost”), or lonely (“online learning is a lonely
business”):

... this is definitively not working for me. I simply don’t
know what I’m doing or what I’m supposed to do. I need
face to face interaction, I need total physical immersion in
the learning environment, I need more focused discussions,
etc. I’m glad I went through this experience before
enrolling in an online grad program. I would go totally
crazy.

This has a direct impact on learning results: less than a half of the
participants were certified at the end of the course - course start date: March,
st
st
1 (175 participants); course finish date: June, 1 (70 participants). A high
dropout rate (59%) indicates that the seminar has not met the needs of the
majority of the students. It should be taken into account, however, that the
course has been offered at no cost and, as one of the learners has noted, “to
drop out was much easier as compared to a commercial course.”
The next question that logically follows, is: what else denotes the
quality of virtual communication/learning?

For many people, even though they are conversant in
English, not hearing the voice of the person talking to you