The student at risk in online learning: The case for appropriate research

In this paper we argue for the serious need for research on the theme of not so much "the professor at risk", but "the student at risk" in online learning. Our aim is thus not to try to save the professor and the lectern from extinction. We are more seriously pleading the case for research in online learning to explore the learning dynamic of the student masses that are now 'multimediated' learners. The type of research that we are advocating is inquiry into the thinking that grounds online learning itself. The theoretical framework of online learning draws on a wide range of theoretical substance: theory of media and of semiotics (Tomaselli & Sheperson, 1996; Ryder, 1998), theory of distributed cognition (Brown, 2000; Brown, Collins & Duguid, 1989; Salomon, 1999; Saljö,1999), theory of activity (Engeström, 1991) and theory of learning and of knowledge (Bransford, Brown & Cocking (eds.) 2000; Vygotsky, 1992; Kozulin, 1990; Rogoff, 1990; Phillips, 2000). Our concern regarding research is thus not so much with issues of access, course delivery and 'packaging' and of management of all of these enterprises, but about learning design, about the shifting epistemologies that are grounding online learning (Henning & Van Rensburg, 2002; Henning & Van Der Westhuizen, 2003), about issues of design of learning contents and the student engagement with and use of learning objects as raw asset data, issues of content as metadata, and issues of knowledge content and the place in the hierarchy/network of knowledge pools in a domain of learning. We are less motivated to look at products, of learning, although in randomised experiments, for example, as part of a whole plethora of mixed methods, we would advocate comparisons of learning outcomes, both off- and online. Nothing less, we argue, would be viable to address the complexities of learning of the new student population in its exciting multimedia environment. We make the claim that the field of online learning is still largely under-researched in terms of its effect on learning processes (Clark, 1994; Resnick, 1999, Reeves, 2000).