For students to have a positive learning experience, they must be motivated, and the primary responsibility for this motivation lies with the students themselves. There must be reasons for learning a particular subject that are important to the student if he or she is to be an effective learner.
Once the student has decided that a subject is interesting, and that he or she has a very good reason to proceed with learning it in depth, it then becomes very important that the education establishment provides a learning experience that maintains, and even heightens the learner’s enthusiasm and interest.
Marins, V (2008) begin their article on “Immersion and Interactivity in Virtual Learning Environments” by highlighting the high dropout rates in online and distance education. There are many reasons for these for example feeling isolated, students not having enough time, problems with technology whether from the learner’s side or the educator’s side, individual learning preferences, badly designed courses, inexperienced instructors.
Many reasons for students dropping out of online and distance learning courses are personal in nature and have nothing to do with how the school, college, or university is approaching e-learning, but in some cases education establishments are at fault. Even the most self-motivated students can become frustrated by online courses if teaching is not done in a way that is immersing, and motivating.
Category: E-Learning
