Assessing the Costs and Benefits of Telelearning: A Case Study ...

common area. You heard about the incident that triggered that didn’t
you? One of the students up-loaded a picture from the computer and got
the wrong one and didn’t know that the picture was on his computer, at
least that’s the story. It was a wonderful picture of a women in the lotus
position, starring straight out of the screen, it was a serene expression,
arms folded you know the thing, but completely naked, stark naked, it was
a beautiful picture, but the person was embarrassed, and we had to get
**** to delete it. The other thing is, quite apart from this amusing episode,
there are times when you just make a mistake and you need to correct it.
(instructor 1)
There has to be a way as an instructor [to remove old messages so] that I
could think, all right I have seen all this stuff and I don’t want to see it
again. Even if I could compress it and put it in a folder or put it
somewhere so that it’s not still there. Then I could just keep individual
notes the ones that I know are very important. (instructor 2)
Two additional suggestions from students for improvements in the software are to
have a guide to the use of the software at the beginning of the course and to have an area
where synchronous interaction can occur:
I think what could have been improved is to have a better guide to the
software right up front. And I know it was new software that they were
using for the first time, but that would have helped. As it was, it worked
out fine sort of to be guided as we went. (student A)
[There needs to be] some opportunity for simultaneous interaction
(telephone? chat room?) so that everyone is on the same wavelength.
(student 5)
Several benefits and limitations of interaction and user friendliness have been
discussed. Table 30 provides a summary of the benefits and limitations:
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