Engagement with content/process

Even before the course, began, the accomplishment of being accepted onto the programme was a significant milestone for several participants, for example:

Shaun: And then applying for it and getting accepted onto the course, I remember, God, feeling very positive about that at the time, and feeling very happy that I’d been accepted onto a Masters course, so that was a very positive start for me.

144

Speaking about engagement in the early stages of the course, participants reported feeling a sense of anticipation mixed with anxiety, as well as feeling interested, excited, curious, passionate about learning, and “really throwing myself into it.” Significantly, there was also an attraction to e-learning due to being comfortable with the written form of language:

Jo: Also I think I liked it a lot because I love to write and I think I express myself a lot better umm in the written form than verbally. I will say things in emails, and when we used to write letters, I would say things in letters that I wouldn’t say-

Asynchronous communication also afforded learners opportunities to more carefully compose their contributions; they were able to reflect on a posting in draft form and edit it before posting, and the process of writing thoughts out by hand/computer helped with a considered kind engagement which was useful for managing or avoiding other negative feelings:

Sarah: umm I was aware umm of a greater confidence in contributing across the course, and I think that was probably partly cos it’s written, so there was something about written element, and that’s my preferred way of expressing myself umm and it allowed again it’s the shame thing I think, it allows you to check out what you were saying before you post it [laughs]

Such self-reflection seemed to allow participants to be more confident that they were expressing themselves accurately, and judging their responses to others appropriately. It can therefore be seen as a way of either containing or warding off the anxiety which spontaneity might engender through misrepresenting oneself or disclosing more than one intends (see 4.3.1.6 - emotional disclosure for more on this).

When moving on to engagement with the process of learning, most participants spoke about this in relation to the discussion forums (asynchronous) and chatrooms (synchronous). It was noticeable that the early narratives around this were favourable, with engagements discussed in positive terms:

Jo: Umm, I think my favourite part- well, I liked everything really- I liked, I really liked the discussion forums, I liked the umm interaction with other people.

The asynchronous nature of the forum exchanges meant that students found themselves returning frequently to check whether there had been replies to messages posted online:

Elizabeth: I, I, I spend a lot more time doing the work that I thought I was going to do so I set aside a certain amount of time to do umm reading and but because of the forums, I found I was quite addicted to looking back at them and answering. So I spent a lot of time, a lot more time on the whole degree than I expected to.

Describing interactions with a course as “an addiction” suggests an attachment to the educational experience which is both strongly positive and strongly negative at the same time.

145

Most participants expressed a preference for the forums ahead of the chatrooms because they were able to go at their own pace, and have time to think before responding, whereas the chatrooms often felt too fast-paced and chaotic:

Charles: I think the forums were far better because the chatrooms were pretty manic in the hour… so the forums were at least a time to contact and communicate with other colleagues, give them more time, more thoughtful… because in the chatrooms, it is a reaction- whereas with the forums, one’s got time to contemplate, and think deeply about things, and then do a bit of research as well.

There were exceptions - one participant engaged much more easily with the chatrooms than the forums, and this was in part motivated by the fact that chatroom sessions were assessed. This same student also felt motivated to undertake self-assessment online quizzes, and described how she would get quite competitive with herself, and how she used the quizzes to check her understanding of the main learning objectives each week. She felt that chatrooms gave more of a flowing conversation than forums, which made her feel included in the community, and described the timeframe and process for settling in to the course:

Rachel: it was probably about a month before I really started feeling umm reasonably OK, umm, you know, I got, I got the hang of the, of doing posts. Once I’d done a couple of chatrooms, I was feeling, I felt better… Now the chatroom experience actually eventually gave me a lot of confidence… I felt part of something, with the chatrooms particularly, err so the forums to an extent but the chatrooms particularly… Well, there was a feeling of sort of immediacy, I think… umm, so it was more, it was spontaneous.

Rachel noted that the issue of spontaneity and disclosure also emerged in relation to styles of interaction, and that there were differences between her online and face-to-face ways of being:

Rachel: Umm interestingly, if I’d been in an actual room with a group of people, I tend to hold back… cos I see the body language, you know, I see other people want to speak, and, and I hold back. But when I- you know, you obviously can’t do that, and I just obviously typed in what I wanted to say and you know, when I get good feedback, or if it got a good sort of conversation going, I felt good about that, and I felt good about myself, and a lot more confident than I would have been in an actual group. And a strange knock-on effect from that was when I- later on, now that I am in groups, I feel a lot more confident in groups generally Other participants echoed these comments, for example suggesting that the online nature of the course allowed them to tap in to the part of their identity that would like to be more outgoing and spontaneous, giving them permission to speak and contribute more. Several students reported feeling able to participate more online than in a face-to-face group, especially a large one, where they would hold back and be hesitant about contributing. Some realised that they didn’t experience any anxiety about forum or chatroom interactions where they would normally have felt anxious about “live” group sessions. She went on to

146

consider how online, she was enabled to be quiet and did not feel the same pressure to speak:

Felicity: But if I was umm going into a, a social situation where I didn’t know anybody, then- I think actually for me, that’s about not knowing what to say, it’s not knowing what to say… Cos yeah, online, you, you don’t have to speak straight away, do you? You can take your time.

The lack of knowledge about others online proved to be liberating in some ways- for example, Michelle was surprised at the extent to which the course enabled her to focus on her own learning:

Michelle: I really, I really was surprised because I found it incredibly helpful for me to not be so focused on like the other people, yeah? I had the feeling like I could really focus much more on my experience, on my learning, and um, and that really surprised me, and I was really, really very much into it, you know?

But there were also certain barriers to connection, and the disembodiment was problematic for some participants:

Keri: I sometimes learned some very interesting and touching things about the other person, but still not having the face, and the voice, umm, you know, made me sort of hold back.

She went on to suggest that there might also be cultural elements to this sense of holding back, which would be applicable to both online or offline interactions. Shaun experienced a difference between emotion in the online and face-to-face context, and thought this may have been because of the content of the learning. He recalled doing clinical training which involved some extremely emotional work, but didn’t experience the same intensity in the online course, and he attributed this as follows:

Shaun: And part of it is that it wasn’t, you know, an experiential course, was it, there was no skill, or hands-on learning, that wasn’t the way the course was. So I mean, that was part of the reason for it like, and the other part of the reason was, you know, reading something isn’t as emotive as listening to someone speaking those words, maybe.

Notably, students’ personal lives outside their studies impacted on their learning in numerous ways, and for some students, there were specific personal issues which changed the way they were able to engage. One student experienced a bereavement during a module which necessitated a leave of absence. Speaking about returning to the course, Sarah felt able to control when she spoke about her bereavement, and when she kept it to herself. She was also able to be upset at certain points without others knowing, and without feeling as though she needed to talk about her distress or explain it to others. So the anonymity of online learning was helpful in giving her some control. Another student experienced a serious illness after a diagnosis of breast cancer, and she found the contact from other students extremely valuable. She echoed Sarah’s experience:

147

Michelle: And that was also like very useful in the way that I kind of like, I, my emotions were almost- it helped me, it helped me keep my emotions a bit separate, you know, so they were not kind of like all over all the time, yeah? So like studying, and discussing kind of like err things with other students about the subject was also actually helpful and then I remember, yeah, I felt really an enormous emotional support from this group, and that was really, that was really amazing, yeah?

The fact that she felt so close to and supported by students she had never met was both surprising and very comforting.

Participants spoke about a discontinuity in experience from the course modules - where in general they felt connected and highly engaged - to the dissertation phase, which was much more of a solitary pursuit in conjunction with their supervisor, and little or no peer interaction. Some, like Keri, enjoyed the supervisory process:

Keri: For me, the dissertation was very special, Chris. Err there was a deepening of umm how I was learning. Umm I was very fortunate to have a supervisor who was so grounded in the subject that I was err researching on. Umm I enjoyed her err supervision.

Others found the change from highly interactive, structured modules to the dissertation to be more challenging, and several participants report frustration around this (see section 4.3.1.10 Frustration/anger).

Participants spoke about engaging with the course via their background as clinicians, and how learning from the course could be applied to their clinical work, despite the fact that it wasn’t a clinical training per se:

Charles: I thought the Ethics module was superb, because it was, we had so much we did on our own, then it was live, and for someone who has been something of a worrier for most of my life, and has lacked confidence for most of it, although that’s beginning to increase and grow now.

and related to this, the same participant had an increased level of confidence in his clinical practice after some advice on a clinical issue:

Charles: So now that has helped me to worry less and be more confident. So that was a real lightbulb moment and helped me emotionally as well.

Others made similar observations about how the course had a positive influence on their working practice:

Michelle: And actually, I found that really quite interesting as well, the feeling that “Yeah, I’m learning something theoretical and I really know about in the real dealing”… the whole existential question, I think that was actually a learning that influences me now quite a lot in my work, yeah? And this is actually for me quite a breakthrough… this was definitely something quite profound I’ve err learned or, yeah, that started in the course.

Shaun found the theory useful to his clinical work, and the experience of writing about it for an assessment helped him to handle a conflict effectively. He described several “penny

148

dropping” moments during that module, as he integrated his personal experience into theoretical frameworks:

Shaun: I think the existential flavour [of the course] definitely has been useful to me, and the other bit that has been useful to me from the course was that conflict module because I’m allowed to sta- I’m able to stand back from things now and kind of see things, you know, within a framework rather than get swept along by them. So that’s been really useful to me. But at the time, it really helped me to umm to handle the conflict. And I wrote up my umm paper for that module on something that I was dealing with at work, at the time, and I remember, it just helped me to deal with that conflict, really really effectively.

There were other more prosaic aspects of studying online, such as the convenience afforded by distance learning, e.g. the student who had previously spent many years driving several hours at the weekend in order to pursue his studies did not having to travel for this programme, and was able to work from home:

Shaun: I was just so glad to find a course that was so family friendly for me with three small kids and two part-time jobs, that I could do from where I live is pretty remote, so it was just fantastic, it was a real match for me

To summarise, Students had to overcome their anxiety to start engaging with the course. Some were attracted by the interaction being text-based as it allowed them to carefully compose their contributions before posting, and this helped to avoid feelings of shame and embarrassment. For this reason, most participants preferred the forums to the chatrooms, and this enabled many of them to feel more confident in engaging and contributing than they would be face-to-face. Students also felt highly engaged when they considered their personal experience in light of the theoretical materials, and many found that this later impacted positively on their clinical work.