The graduate student learning experience in online, hybrid, and onsite courses

The growth in online student enrollments in higher education in the United States is transforming post-secondary education by making academic courses and degree programs accessible to more students. Those taking courses online are becoming a larger segment of the overall student population. Many faculty, however, do not accept the value and legitimacy of online education, and view it as inferior to traditional on-campus instruction. A divide exits between the negative perceptions of faculty and the students who continue to enroll in online courses in record numbers. This qualitative interpretive phenomenological study explored the experiences of four doctoral students who took online, hybrid, and onsite courses in a specific program. Participants were interviewed face-to-face and then by telephone about their communication, content mastery, and course workload in each of the delivery methods, and their overall sense of the program. The theoretical frameworks used in this study were constructivism and connectivism. Participants found that the online and hybrid environments provided more occasions for group learning and collaboration and felt that these methods were more effective than the faculty-led, traditional onsite courses. The online and hybrid formats were found to be better even by those who preferred face-to-face instruction. The most effective role the faculty member could play in the success of each course was that of facilitator of learning rather than teacher. Course satisfaction was more dependent on the faculty member and how they designed or lead the course, rather than the way in which it was delivered.