Internet Learning Volume 1, Number 1, Fall 2012 | Page 42

Online Courses: Student Preferences Survey

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discussion posts or blogs and sent an occasional email, there was less agreement that a
relationship developed or that mentoring occurred from one student to another. (Table 3)
Table 3 Collaborative learning
%
Strongly
Agree

Agree

Disagree

Strongly
Disagree

1.2

75%

25%

0%

0%

53

1.3

70%

26%

4%

0%

53

1.4

72%

23%

2%

4%

52

1.5

69%

21%

2%

8%

51

1.8

61%

18%

4%

18%

52

1.8

52%

25%

13%

10%

I shared written documents with other students in the class.

51

1.8

51%

29%

6%

14%

I took part in a group presentation.

52

1.9

50%

23%

15%

12%

I worked on a project with another student(s)
using collaborative file sharing.

52

2

46%

27%

8%

19%

I shared an individual presentation.

51

2.1

47%

22%

10%

22%

I provided mentoring to or sought assistance from
another student in the class

51

2.2

41%

22%

16%

22%

A peer to peer relationship developed from an online class.

51

2.2

41%

20%

18%

22%

n

Average

Faculty discussed assignments or grades.

53

Faculty gave prompt feedback on assignments.
Faculty shared ideas from reading or class notes.

Instructor to student

Student to student
I participated in a discussion with another student.
I commented on another student's discussion post or
blog or added to a wiki.
I worked on a project with another student (s) using
group email.

Time Online
Respondents were asked about how much time in hours they spent online for their class work in
a given day. The average reported among of time was 4.5 hours and the median was 4 hours. A
respondent reported spending 20 hours online in a given day but removing that response as an
outlier the average is 4.26 hours.
Respondents also reported spending some of their leisure time in online activities. The
average amount of leisure time spent online was 3.11 hours with a median of 2 hours. Again,
there was a respondent that reported 20 hours online in leisure time. Removing that “20 hours”
response from the calculation brings the average hours to 2.78 hours.
Websites that were popular with respondents included Facebook with 63% of
respondents visiting this site, news-related sites (62%) and Youtube (51%). Websites that
assisted in the search for job opportunities (45%) or for scholarships (42%) were also reported as
useful to respondents. Less popular were twitter (11%), LinkedIn (19%), iTunes (23%), TED
(6%), other (15%), and online gaming sites (6%). In a given day, the average respondent spends
a fairly significant amount of time online each day.