The central idea in the article of Rovai and Barnum presented here is the purpose to ascertain how graduate students perceived learning in a variety of on-line courses. Some people are concerned that distance education is compromising the quality of education. In there point of view technology will denigrate higher education and destroy the course atmosphere. However, on the other hand, many researches believe that strong feelings of community can be developed in distance learning environments.

The thesis of Moore and Thompson (1990) und Verduin and Clark (1991) suggested that teaching and studying at a distance can be as effective as traditional instruction provided:

a) the methods and technologies used are appropriate to the instructional tasks
b) there is student-student interaction, and
c) there is timely teacher-to-student feedback.

The purpose of the study of Rovai and Barnum (Participants in the study were 328 volunteers out of 527 graduate students enrolled in 19 on-line graduate courses), was to ascertain how graduate students perceived learning in a variety of on-line courses. The present study provided evidence of significant differences in perceived learning among the 19 on-line graduate courses taught by the same university.

The amount of interaction in a course appears to be an important element of course effectiveness. Wagner (1994) defined interaction as an interplay and exchange in which individuals and groups influence each other. Thus interaction focuses on the interpersonal behaviors in a learning community.
On-line distance education environments that use major e-learning systems such as Blackboard.com and WebCT are capable of supporting all the components of the instructional process, including interaction. These learning models require students to construct their own knowledge in a self-directing manner and to take on more responsibility for their own learning. As methodology tool this system consists of an integrated set of producitivity, communication, assessment, and content management tools that allow instructors to design and present on-line instruction. Used as methodology instrumentation interaction can be recorded by the Blackboard.com e-learning system. In particular, two measures of interactivity were retrieved from the e-learning system: (a) active interaction – operationalized by the number of messages posted to the course discussion boards by students per week; and (b) passive interaction – operationalized by the number of accesses to the course discussion boards by students per week. However, there was no way to determine how long students spent on each posted message or whether they acutally read the messages in the discussion boards that they accessed.

On the University of Innsbruck they are using the Blackboard.com e-learning system called `e-campus´. The costs of the e-learning/e-teaching strategy project are posted with EUR 389.173,- and these contain the costs of a team of four persons who are responsible for the infrastructure. The e-learning strategy documents of the University proclaims, that the voluntary uses of professors and undergraduates rises each term. However, from discussions with the undergraduates comes out, that the platform is used very rarely. Most students use the Blackboard.com only to download documents and to get information about the courses. The communication platform is used only infrequently by the students as well as the professors. Most communication runs over Email. Why is one to invest as much money if it is used so rarely? In order to increase the use of the platform with all their functions, one possibility could be to provide training courses with the instructors and the students. This courses could be continously integrated into the daily course-flow, so that both sides should become comfortable with the system.

On-line instructors can manifest verbal immediacy in an on-line learning environment, but nonverbal immediacy behaviors are more difficult in a text-bases environment. Garrison et al suggested in case of the textual communication that students will articulate their interpretations carefully; because it is asynchronous, they will deliberate thoughtfully over others´interpretations. Gunawardena and Zittle (1997) argued that on-line students can create social presence by projecting their identities and building on-line communities through text-based communications alone. So says Liam Rourke on moodle.tru.ca. Moreover, Hirumi adn Bermudes (1996) reported that on-line courses can be more interactive than traditional ones, providing more personal and timely feedback to meet students´ needs than is possible in large traditional courses.

With respect to the nineteen on-line graduate courses analyzed, female students felt that they learned more than their male counterparts. This difference can possibly be explained by gender-related differences in communication patterns. Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, and Tarule (1986) model suggest that many female students place emphasis on relationships and prefer to learn in an environment where cooperation is stressed over competition. The connected voice nurtures classroom community-building, whereas the independent voice does not. If true, the implication for practise is that on-line instructors must recognize various student learning preferences (i.e., independent or interdependent) and make curriculum decisions to suit the preferences of their various students rather than assuming that one model fits all.

Into Liam Rourke´s explanations concerning the topic "citical discourse" on Moodle he came to the conclusion that one of the reasons why it can be hard for students to arrive at some mutual understanding is because they shared no common ground. Some of the reasons that students do not come in a productive form of interaction might be because they have different, and competing, interpretations of what is happening in a forum.

This results of the survey of Rovai and Batnum provide some evidence to support the need for quality assurance in on-line learning programs. In the context of distance education, quality assurance seeks to balance course design, pedagogy, and technology with the needs of learners. The differences in perceptions beween learning in the on-line course and a traditional course is consistent with the research of Smith (1996), who found that many students would not select distance ecucation because they felt that it could not provide the learning they desired in a traditional course. Nonetheless, the question arises, are these differences in learning perceptions real or imaginary?
First, they felt that traditional course delivery would result in increased learning because the human energy, charisma, personality, and appeal generated by a good instructor would come through more dramatically in a face-to-face setting and inspire more learning.The second theme was that these on-line students believed a classroom created an environment that is more responsive to their learning needs, where the instructor has more instructional tools available, such as a chalkboard, and can use them in order to clarify teaching points. They felt that in on-line settings there were delays, students were often required to find the answers themselves using available resources, and some on-line students preceived the process of socially negotiationg a common understanding.

However, the benefits of on-line education work only when the course is carefully designed to achieve these benefits. Technology is not self-implementing, and effective course design and pedagogy are required to achieve quality educational outcomes. We need to understand not only the technology but also the situation and the participants. Here media paedagogues must set around a connection between the technology of the media and the human behaviour to construct. The goal of the educational work should be an optimized communication among students.

The quality of interactions is another important aspect of communications that should be the topic of further research in which the role of cognitive content and instructor immediacy behaviors are examined. Moreover, research is required to identify the elements of on-line course design that are significantly related to learning and overall course effectiveness.


Alfred P. Rovai is an associate professor of education on the Regent University in Virgina Beach, Kirk T. Barnum is his research assistant.