Student experiences of creating and sharing material in online learning

Abstract

Background: User-generated content in an online environment has significant implications in both education and health. Instead of a model of knowledge being something transferred from the expert to the student or to the patient, Web 2.0 technologies offer the hope of making learning, and healthcare delivery, a more collaborative and participative process. However, some evidence suggests that this supposed democratisation of production is not entirely democratic and, in an educational context, many students are uncomfortable about sharing material they create with their peers.

Aim: To understand students’ affective and other experiences of generating content to be shared online with peers (e.g. in online discussions).

Methods: Online interviews, face-to-face focus groups and further methods with two student groups in medical education, one undergraduate and one postgraduate.

Results: Students were broadly positive about creating and sharing material online, but were also quite anxious about doing so. Many practical issues, including around course design, student workload and assessment pressures, were barriers to students creating and sharing material. Group size is also important, with self-sustaining activity less likely in small groups.

Conclusion: Successfully introducing user-generated content into medical education requires attention to practical details and an awareness of the student anxiety that can arise.

Introduction

There would seem to be a happy confluence between constructivist ideas about learning and trends in Internet usage. Self-directed learning through a collaborative and participative environment with other students is recognised as being a good, or even the best, approach in many contexts (Guthrie et al. 2004; Kim 2005; Hmelo-Silver et al. 2007). Meanwhile, new jargon like ‘Web 2.0’ (Sandars et al. 2010) is trying to capture an online environment in which individuals are not just users of online resources but are also producing and sharing content through interactive websites (e.g. writing reviews on Amazon, uploading material to flickr), online communities (on mailing lists, on web fora and in other environments), through wikis (with Wikipedia the best known example), social networking (e.g. Facebook and Bebo), gaming (online games, e.g. World of Warcraft and LittleBigPlanet) and other technologies (e.g. Second Life, an interactive virtual environment somewhere between a game and a social networking space). Bruns (2006, 2007) has coined the term ‘produsage’, a portmanteau of ‘production’ and ‘usage’, to describe this new behaviour of individuals who produce material as well as using material created by others.

In both contexts, the model of an authoritative source passing knowledge to the masses has been challenged. At the interface, e-learning should be well placed to bring the opportunities of online user-generated content into a learning process. Medical educationalists (Ward 2008; Ward et al. 2009; Sandars et al. 2010) and educationalists more generally (Harasim 2000) have discussed the potential this can bring. Meanwhile, individuals who are ‘digital natives’, i.e. those who have grown up with using online environments, may well expect such an approach in their studies (Prensky 2006) and medical career (Hughes et al. 2008). Bruns (2006) argues that higher education has a key role in preparing a future generation of ‘produsers’.

However, the explosion of online user-generated content is not without its critics. Some criticise the amateurism of the masses (Keen 2007), although the supervised learning environment and the challenge of teaching self-directed learning are familiar issues in education. The risks in a safety-critical context like medicine are greater still (Potts 2006; Ward 2008). Questions around intellectual property rights abound, and there are challenges for teachers to explain traditional ideas of plagiarism. More generally, we can see ‘mismatches in quality perspectives’ between Web 2.0 and higher education (Collis & Moonen 2008, p 103). Booth (2007) has suggested an ‘evaluation bypass’ has taken place when it comes to the enthusiasm shown for Web 2.0.

The idea of ‘digital natives’ has been questioned (Bennett et al. 2008). It contains an untested assumption of the transferability of skills and motivation from one setting (e.g. Facebook) to another (e.g. Moodle). Others argue that the producers of user-generated content in Web 2.0 environments are a distinct subset of all users, leading to a bias in the content generated (Riehle 2006). While such a bias in involvement may matter less if the focus is on the output, this article concentrates on the praxis of a participative process, particularly in the light of evidence that greater participation may predict academic achievement (Coldwell et al. 2008). Do all students access this ‘produsing’ experience?

The initial response from the research community to these new technologies has been around raising awareness of change and a hopeful literature trying out the new. Some pragmatic guides have been developed to support online discussion by students (Penn State Learning Design Community Hub 2008). However, there has been less research on the negative experience, students may have of such innovations.

For learners to benefit from this ideal of a collaborative virtual learning experience, they need to be generating material. In the classroom, we have long known that some students are more willing to input than others, but we have also developed mechanisms for encouraging wider participation. However, the nature of the experience generating content and the barriers to doing so need to be revisited for the online environment, with prior research in this area tending not to address interpersonal variation in students (Hammond 2005). What is the affective experience of students to generating material to be shared with peers in an online environment? How does that experience vary across students and online contexts?

Anecdotally, several possible barriers to participation in online discussion and wikis are apparent, some around a negative affective response. Possible barriers may include:

• embarrassment/pride;

• insecurity;

• unfamiliarity;

• negative feedback/lack of positive feedback to sharing material;

• competitiveness/not wanting to share good ideas/distaste of ‘free riders’;

• power issues/ownership;

• motivation;

• not viewed as ‘proper learning’;

• task issues/explanation of task; and

• usability problems.

We can ask whether there is an (implicit) process of induction/apprenticeship into being a ‘produsing’ learner in a peer environment, and what facilitates that journey.

Table

Practice points

The idea of user-generated content in online learning environments encompasses material created by students for their peers, including contributions to an online forum or wiki. Creating and sharing material can be a positive and enjoyable experience for students. Students can also be anxious about sharing material they have created with others. There are some practical considerations that can improve the student experience of creating user-generated content.

Methods

A programme of research was followed consisting of a number of small-scale studies. The approach taken was of practice-based research, with studies rooted in my own experience as a teacher and a student in online environments. These studies sit within an action research methodology (Harden 1986; Lingard et al. 2008) of small-scale plan-do-study-act cycles or parts of cycles. I adopted a self-reflective stance, supplemented by discussion with my peers (fellow teachers and fellow students) and an educational supervisor. As a check on the reliability of the interpretation of qualitative data, these discussions included examining a portion of the raw data. This approach is pragmatic and seeks to produce high validity because of its closeness to real examples. However, that may entail a compromise in terms of methodological rigour.

The studies have involved collecting qualitative and ethnographic data relevant to the research question via a number of routes. Two teaching programmes within UCL Medical School are considered:

1. UCL students (2007 intake in their second year and 2008 intake in their first) on the postgraduate programme in Health Informatics, delivered by blended learning at the Centre for Health Informatics and Multiprofessional Education (CHIME);

2. fifth-year UCL medical undergraduates attending the Peer-Assisted Learning (PALS) student-selected module, delivered face-to-face, supplemented with e-learning tools.

These are diverse groups and a mixed methods approach was pragmatically adopted to cover them. The postgraduate programme in Health Informatics is delivered through blended learning using Moodle as a virtual learning environment (VLE). All modules are part-time. Each M-level module of 15 ECTS-credits involves 3 consecutive face-to-face study days plus a range of online activities over, at the time, approximately 1 month before and 2 months after the face-to-face days. The user-generated content for these students was all within Moodle and largely consisted of the use of discussion forums, with discussion varying in how directed it was. Thus, students could discuss any aspect of a module in a general discussion forum, but sometimes specific journal papers, vignettes or questions were given as a starting point for discussion. Other activities included the use of a wiki to be populated by the students.

The programme has been running for several years but was previously mostly based on face-to-face teaching. The 2007 intake were the first to experience the new blended learning format. Students on this programme are generally working in healthcare (typically the National Health Service) and generally have been out of formal education for several years. They tend to come from clinical backgrounds (usually medicine or nursing) or IT backgrounds. Students usually have little prior experience of VLEs, although some do, and they are usually IT proficient, with many being very proficient and experienced.

Experience with the new blended learning format was initially disappointing in terms of how much the 2007 intake interacted within Moodle. With the 2008 intake, various measures were taken to foster more online interaction. As part of our commitment to action research, the research existed alongside attempts to increase student's creation of content. More time was spent in the 2008 induction session (consisting of 3 face-to-face days plus online activities) introducing Moodle and the range of online activities used in the course. This included a half-hour session by the author, including an introduction to some basic educational theory so as to explain the rationale behind the use of various online activities, in order to stress their value to the students. The 2008 intake showed a higher rate of Moodle usage than the previous cohort. All the modules were also revised after the first year.

Some comparison is possible between the two Health Informatics cohorts. The first-years are newer to the VLE and blended learning, while the second-years have over a year and multiple modules’ experience. It should also be noted that the first- and second-years are different cohorts: the second year is slightly larger, has fewer women and has more people from the IT supplier side. These multiple confounds need to be considered in interpreting results.

Note that the two cohorts are not completely distinct. The modular postgraduate programme means a few students start during the academic year or take modules over up to a 5-year period. A few students were only taking individual modules as continuing professional development and not registered for the postgraduate programme.

The fifth-year medical undergraduates were doing an optional module on PALS. Within this, they learn about educational theory and have practical experience teaching third-year medical undergraduates and nursing students. The module runs for about a month several times a year and is based on face-to-face teaching. In the 2007/08 academic year, we introduced Moodle into the teaching in a very open-ended manner, allowing the students to develop a module Moodle page how they wished to use it in order to support each other and future PALS students. Within the module, students do a mini-project and, within each cohort, a few students usually did a mini-project specifically around Moodle. We have made the students ‘Tutors’ on their Moodle module. Thus, students developed content (mostly text) within Moodle for themselves and for use by later student cohorts, as well as communicating with each other in discussion forums. Students also used Moodle to share materials, like PowerPoint presentations, and to work collaboratively on them. The first cohort of PALS students used the discussion forums in Moodle very little, but how Moodle was presented and used evolved over subsequent groups and forum use increased.

The PALS students have generally had little prior exposure to e-learning within the medical curriculum. Past experience with this group has been that they are much more enthusiastic about interacting online and creating content than the Health Informatics students. They generally conform to the ‘digital natives’ model, being experienced users of the Internet and social networking (e.g. in this group, all have or, in one case, have had a Facebook account).

Whereas the Health Informatics students had not met before their course, the PALS students have been studying at Medical School together for some years, although with varying degrees of prior familiarity with each other.

Multiple sources of qualitative data were sought:

1. Epistolary e-mail interviews were conducted with the Health Informatics students.

2. Focus groups were conducted with the PALS students.

3. A personal research log was kept, including notes taken during or after CHIME departmental meetings discussing the course, and face-to-face sessions on a postgraduate module on e-learning the author was taking at the UCL Centre for the Advancement of Learning and Teaching (CALT), as well as further opportunities.

4. Transcripts of synchronous tutorials carried out on Skype with the Health Informatics students.

These are described in further detail below. A thematic analysis using a grounded theory approach was then applied using all this material. This was an inductive approach and with no prior theoretical framework imposed.

E-mail interviews with Health Informatics students

In total, 18 students had taken modules during the study period. Eleven students were taking first-year modules, 8 of whom were from the 2008 intake and studying for the MSc and 3 of whom were doing the module under other circumstances (including 2 who were also taking second-year modules). Nine students were taking second-year modules, 4 of whom were from the 2007 intake and studying for the MSc and 5 of whom were doing the module under other circumstances (including 2 who were also taking first-year modules).

Within each group, the number of Moodle forum posts or comparable activities (glossary entries and workshop contributions) for selected modules was summed. These were the induction ‘module’ (a set of online and face-to-face activities around induction rather than a credit-bearing module) and the first two regular modules for the first-year group; and three out of four modules for the second-year group. For the 9 students in the first-year group who completed the three Moodle modules, their amount of interactive activity was similar across the three modules: Kendall's coefficient of concordance is 0.82, p = 0.001.

The top two and bottom two contributors in each group were approached to take part in the interview, excluding any individuals for whom the author was their personal tutor. Reminders were sent after a month. Six students agreed to take part and were sent the interview questions. Five returned answers (three high contributors and two low contributors; all male), with additional e-mails used to clarify any points raised. The text of the e-mails is given in Appendix 1.

Focus groups with PALS students

Two focus groups were carried out, with the September 2008 and January 2009 PALS cohorts. The focus group question schedule is shown in Appendix 2. As part of their module, the students take turns presenting on their mini-projects on the final course day. This is an informal and celebratory atmosphere with food and drink, including wine, provided. Within that day, a focus group was carried out with the students and other involved staff present. The focus group was on the students’ experience of using Moodle, with particular emphasis on non-use. After the first focus group, two non-users within the group were identified and completed follow-up epistolary e-mail interviews.

The September focus group consisted of 22 undergraduates and 5 staff members in addition to two moderators. The January focus group consisted of 13 undergraduates and 2 staff members in addition to two moderators.

Research log

A personal research log was kept of my own thoughts and of ethnographic observations. Notes were taken after departmental (CHIME) meetings discussing the course (both ‘course review meetings’ and ‘peer review meetings’), after CALT face-to-face sessions, bilateral discussion with colleagues and student feedback given in or outside of class.

Skype tutorials

As an innovation within the Health Informatics course, online tutorials were tried in one module with the first-years. The transcripts from these were saved and shared with the class. These tutorials involved synchronous text-based interchange using Skype, hosted by two module tutors and open to all students in the module. Discussion focused on module topics, but also included consideration of the utility of this format in comparison with other forms of online interaction. Four synchronous tutorials were carried out and are included here. These were all intended to be with multiple students, but two only involved single students.

Ethics

Research was conducted according to the guidelines of the institution. In particular, identifiable data were stored according to the institutional guidelines on data protection. However, institutional ethics committee approval is not required for questions of this nature.

Results

A thematic analysis was carried out and the themes described below. Quotes are given verbatim. Broadly, the data indicated that creating and sharing material was a positive and enjoyable experience. A high-contributing Health Informatics student said, ‘I did find the process of creating and sharing the material was helpful and enjoyable, and would have liked more of it’. A low-contributing student said, ‘I have to say that sharing has been a rewarding experience’. Students across both courses praised Moodle.

However, there could also be anxiety in creating and sharing material. This was chiefly around a sense of being exposed and worrying about the value of one's contributions. A Health Informatics student described the experience of sharing material as ‘moderately anxious’ because he was, ‘exposing one's work to one's peers’. Another talked about his ‘Uncertainty of validity or value of content’. Another said, ‘when I post something and I do not receive response it make me feel like the question asked was ignored and not important, and subsequently the impulse to share more views is supressed’. Another said: ‘intimidated by the greater level of insight posted by fellow students than i felt able to compete with. Sometimes drafted responses but never posted them’. In particular, being the first in a particular activity ‘could be slightly daunting’. Familiarity with material helped to alleviate this anxiety: ‘I tended to feel more comfortable posting to the forum when answering questions on material I felt comfortable with’. Familiarity can also mean having studied the module: one student in feedback commented that interactive tasks could seem intimidating at first, but they ‘weren’t difficult’ once one had done the prior work.

One Health Informatics student talked about feeling ‘protective of what I create’ and said he has ‘heard a classmate share this feeling’. A lecturer reported students expressing similar concerns.

Another theme was around the benefits that the asynchronous nature of online contributions can confer. The format encourages students ‘to frame and refine my thinking rather more than if I were simply making notes for myself’. Another said, ‘the conversation should be maintained asynchronously because it allows to think before speaking, being an important characteristic’. It allowed individuals ‘to engage in the forum when it was convenient for me’. One Health Informatics student said, ‘I also felt that as our group has a number of people who are quite extrovert it was often easier to post a relevant point to the forum than it was to get a chance to say it in class’.

One PALS student said that Moodle had allowed him to have input from others on the course who he did not otherwise know and from whom he would not have otherwise heard. One student said: ‘I prefer to call […] there's some things you can’t do over text or a computer’. However, another responded, ‘You can’t phone a PowerPoint presentation’.

The written, permanent format can also be off-putting. A Health Informatics student said, ‘The very benefit can be the downside. Lack of instant feedback or uncertainty of the comment you’re about to “publish” can lead to avoiding participation’. Another explained, ‘online, where everything's written down and archived forever, I think [there is] perhaps more of a problem than in face-to-face, verbally-mediated settings’. Another said, ‘Never really got to grips with the dissonance between the informality of posting as per speaking in a conversation – and the formality of my words being permanently & visibly preserved’.

One student commented on the role of being personally addressed: ‘I think i would have felt more obligated to [contribute] if i was asked to by name (which i was occasionally) – otherwise it felt similar to being cc’d into a group email’.

The Skype-mediated, synchronous, group, text-based chats proved popular. One student who was talkative in class but a low contributor in Moodle was very active here. Some students said they preferred this format to posting to the forums for some matters. The students appeared to enjoy the immediate feedback of synchronous conversation. They see them as being less formal, and that meaning less time and care is needed in constructing their questions/input.

The beneficial nature of group working and feedback from one's peers emerged as another theme. A Health Informatics student said, ‘I felt at times we as a group worked together to arrive at a solution which felt satisfying’. He went on, ‘It did feel good to be part of the community and when my posts generated some response or discussion this gave me a sense of validation’. Feedback from tutors was also valued in student feedback.

A theme around social comparison was identified in the data, which could be positive or negative. One student said how the Moodle environment ‘allows benchmarking against other peoples’ contributions’.

A common theme was about how a lack of contribution from others was negative and off-putting: ‘I certainly felt inhibited if there was an absence of contribution from others on the course; a mixture of not wanting to be the only kid in class with his hand up, and feeling as though one is shouting into an anechoic chamber.’ Another said: ‘uncomfortable, perhaps due to the coldness of posting without (knowing whether I’d be) getting any response’.

Group size seems to be a factor here. Students spoke in favour of a larger group size, ‘with a consequent higher chance of a self-sustaining conversation happening’. There was a clear consensus across the Health Informatics students, Health Informatics teachers and the PALS students on this matter.

More structured and meaningful exercises were welcomed. One Health Informatics student, for example, asked for, ‘Specifity of what I am asked to share too. Something a bit more guiding tha[n] “share your thoughts” on a paper or journal’. Another comment reflected a general desire for activities to have a purpose with respect to students’ learning objectives: ‘The activity needs to be meaningful; there are times when it seems like we’re asked to contribute merely to go through the constructionist motions’. That said, students still shared a hope with teachers of a more spontaneous and informal activity. One Health Informatics student said, ‘I’d certainly have liked us to have generated more of a culture of informal discussion about the work’.

With both courses, there was a theme around how online use existed within a context of face-to-face contact as well. For example, asked what would encourage creating and sharing material, a Health Informatics student responded, ‘knowing my classmates better face to face! I strongly believe that more face to face teaching in the beginning of the course will enhance online interaction during the course.’ One student described the experience of getting into a disagreement with someone else online during the first module and feeling ‘under attack’, but, ‘Needless to say those feelings didn’t last. Meeting with classmates in person helps disperse any misunderstanding created by written speech’.

The PALS students had much more face-to-face contact. They talked of how they had ‘perfectly good existing lines of communication’ instead of Moodle, and ‘regular [face-to-face] contact’. Moodle and (more so) e-mail supplemented these channels, being useful for particular tasks, like sharing PowerPoint presentations.

In many cases, there were practical obstacles to students creating and sharing material more, in the form of pressures external to the course or issues around how the courses were designed. For example, a Health Informatics student said, ‘Working full time was probably the biggest obstacle’. The Health Informatics students had sustained complaints about particular timetabling arrangements (since changed).

Both student groups were focused on assessment. A Health Informatics student said, ‘it seems that the final assignment is everything that matters, however if the [interactive] exercises were clarified [as to] how they counted to the final classification it would help to increase compliance’. Tutors reported online activity nose-diving among the Health Informatics students as the assignment deadline neared.

Within the PALS group, there was uncertainty and a lack of trust in the technology, with students and staff commenting that you do not know whether people ‘have read’ a message sent to a Moodle forum. There appeared to be some lack of trust in how Moodle works, saying they had ‘more reliable’ online alternatives. One PALS student described accidentally e-mailing the wrong group through a mistake using Moodle and his subsequent embarrassment. To an extent, this meant they used alternative online technologies (like e-mail) instead of Moodle, but they remained keen users of the Internet. Some students said they did not know about some of the options Moodle supplies; some complained about its usability.

For the PALS students, a theme around their past experiences – of computer use, Internet use, online interaction and this style of learning – was also apparent. A VLE was new to most of the students, presenting barriers. The PALS students, in particular, preferred to use familiar Internet technologies over Moodle, notably e-mail and MSN Messenger, but also Facebook. One PALS student explained how they ‘got into the habit’ of using group e-mails over Moodle because ‘on the very first day’, a student with a particular lead role had started using e-mail to communicate with the group. That student said that they received so many official e-mails pertaining to their role, that it was easier to forward these on within e-mail than to change medium to Moodle. E-mails were seen as being ‘more reliable’ and produced a ‘quicker response’. ‘People check their e-mails loads of times a day’, meaning e-mail is the ‘definitive’ way of communicating. This group had a sophisticated notion of what communication modes are suited to what tasks and what audiences.

One PALS student firmly expressed a particular perspective. She was confident in class and experienced at using online technologies. She began by saying that Moodle and similar are ‘time-consuming’ in terms of how long it takes to have a conversation or make a decision compared to face-to-face contact, phone or e-mail. However, she then went on to describe being ‘overwhelmed’ by e-mails and the different online communication channels impinging upon her. She explained how she has thus made a conscious choice to avoid such things. The 2009 intake of Health Informatics MSc students is a much larger cohort and have been much more active in online discussions. This greatly increased activity has generated some reactions similar to this PALS student, with a number of students responding negatively to the volume of resultant e-mails.

Discussion

At some level, many of the problems encountered were about getting the details of the learning context right. There are practical issues about good course design, student workload and assessments. There is a need to understand that different online and face-to-face modalities have different advantages and disadvantages, different affordances: Moodle is not always the answer. Technology use should not be assumed to be easy.

This importance of getting practical details right is familiar in teaching and pre-dates an e-learning context. As teachers, we have long sought to encourage contributions from students, through careful induction procedures, sharing activities from the beginning of a course and the use of low stakes activities initially. Feedback is recognised to have a key role (Jones & Issroff 2005). The same principles apply online (JISC 2009). However, there are also practical details related to the technology and the nature of online communication. We should be wary of simplistic technological determinist models that offer predictions of how technologies will affect the learning experience. The PALS cohorts, for example, showed very different responses from cohort to cohort in how they used Moodle. Instead, we should recognise that some co-evolution occurs between participants and technology. We need integrative or recursive models of how students react to technology (de Vaujany 2005), as with how healthcare professionals do (Greenhalgh et al. 2009).

However, the question arises whether more online interaction would follow simply from simple, practical fixes or whether there are deeper problems. In particular, student interaction can generate anxiety, and this is as true online as it always has been in a classroom environment. Students need to feel safe in the online environment and community (Jones & Issroff 2005).

There is a tension whereby students and teachers wish online discussion would arise ‘organically’, yet where more directed, coercive approaches yield better results. Freedom and control are seen as important motivators in online learning (Jones & Issroff 2005), but tutor direction also has a role. Within the Health Informatics course, we have since moved towards the greater use of formative assignments to encourage students to create material: this seems to be producing more online activity by students and have their support.

Some issues in the existing literature have not emerged here. For example, Issroff and Del Soldato (1996) discuss group make-up and the roles of social affinity and cognitive ability. The student groups considered here may have been too homogeneous to see some of these effects.

There is a paradox with the students whereby they want more online discussion, as do the teachers, but the lack of online discussion discourages participation, an unhelpful feedback loop. Group size is important here (Jones & Issroff 2005), yet it is generally determined by external factors around recruitment and financial pressures around student numbers. Larger Health Informatics cohorts since have shown much higher rates of forum usage, with different problems emerging around managing the volume of communications, including the potential for ‘social networking fatigue’ (Goth 2008).

Conclusion

This was a relatively small practice-based study within a still rapidly emerging field. Clearly, many further lines of enquiry are possible. There were a number of comments raised by individuals in this study that would be worth exploring in greater detail. A study involving more in-depth interviews with individual students would be of value. It was also not possible within this study to do any sensible quantitative analysis of students’ experiences and a larger survey study would also be valuable.

The relationship between anxieties and different communication modalities warrants further consideration too. It is notable how one particular student contributed little in asynchronous online discussion, but did so much more in class and in synchronous online discussion. That interpersonal variation in what modalities are preferred should not be overlooked.

This research has existed within the context of ongoing efforts to improve our teaching across the courses described, and both courses continue to develop. In particular, on the Health Informatics course, we have made a number of changes. Induction has been successively expanded, with more focus on introducing the online environment. More generally, we are seeking to have better structured online activities.

Students share with teachers and technologists some of the vision for ‘produsage’, but student contributions in this manner face many barriers. Staff and students may need to acquire new competences in order to maximise the benefits of e-learning (Sandars 2009), and we should not rely on assumptions that a new generation of students are ‘digital natives’ (Bennett et al. 2008; Sandars 2009). There are many practical issues that need attention, but also we must remember how much anxiety can be generated around sharing and creating materials for some students, even for those in medicine where it is easy to assume high levels of self-confidence.

Acknowledgements

The author thanks Dr Jane Hughes and his fellow students on the Researching E-learning module at the UCL Centre for the Advancement of Learning and Teaching. He also thank Dr Carol Parker, Anthony Peacock and all his fellow teachers, and also the students on the two programmes studied.

Declaration of interest: The author reports no conflicts of interest. The author alone is responsible for the content and writing of the article. The work was carried out as part of the author's employment by UCL with no additional funding.

Appendix 1

Health Informatics e-mail interviews

Text of introductory e-mail:

Subject: Your experience of online teaching and learning

As part of my own professional development as a lecturer and in order to improve teaching in this area, I am carrying out a research project looking into students' feelings towards interacting in an online teaching context. I am approaching selected students on the Health Informatics programme. If you are agreeable, I would like to carry out an interview with you over the course of a few e-mails. It is up to you whether you wish to take part in this, and choosing not to will have no effect on your progression through the course.

If you agree to take part, your responses will be kept confidential. Anything you say will not effect your progression through the course, although I will seek to use the insights gained from all the interviews to improve our online teaching generally. I would like to use short, anonymised extracts from the interviews to illustrate the research findings.

If you are happy to take part, just e-mail me back and we can get started. If you have any questions, feel free to ask me anything.

Henry Potts

Questions:

Dear,

Thank you for agreeing to take part. Your responses will be kept confidential. Feel free to write as much or as little as you want to the following questions. I may e-mail in response to explore some of the issues further. You can say you've had enough questions at any time.

These questions try to explore how you feel or felt about using Moodle as a virtual learning environment. In particular, they explore how you feel or felt about creating and sharing material with the other students: that is, where you post to a forum that everybody else can read, or activities like contributing to a wiki or a glossary.

Thinking about those sorts of activities, what was your experience of posting to a forum, or otherwise creating and sharing material?

Were there any particular things you liked about creating and sharing material?

Were there any particular things you disliked about creating and sharing material?

Were there any particular obstacles to you creating and sharing material?

How did creating and sharing material make you feel?

Would you have liked more or fewer activities in which you were creating and sharing material? Can you say why?

What would have encouraged you to post to forums, or otherwise create and share material more?

Yours,

Henry

Appendix 2

PALS focus groups

A set of questions was prepared as starting points for discussion. These were shown using a data projector and generally involved an initial show of hands before follow-up discussion.

Schedule:

How did you know which room to come along to today? By e-mail; Moodle posting; word of mouth?

How many people in the group did you know before it started? 1; 2-6; 7-12; 13-19; 19+?

Did you communicate with each other online before this course? Yes/no?

How? By e-mail; Facebook; other ways?

Who began a discussion in Moodle – who put material onto Moodle?

Who responded to a posting on Moodle?

What was your experience of beginning a discussion or putting material onto Moodle?

Who looked at Moodle but didn’t write/comment on content?

What was your experience of using Moodle?

Is there any particular reason that you didn’t post things on Moodle?

Who didn’t log on to Moodle at all?

Can you explain why you didn’t log onto Moodle?