Towards meeting student needs and demands through online study

There is today an increased emphasis on the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for open learning. Specifically there is increased use of online course presentations that draw upon a range of media, such as email, the Internet and electronic library access. Despite this trend, neither the impact that this change has made in meeting student learning needs and demands well known nor its impact on their ability to effectively use these technologies during study. There has been some reported research in the areas of learning environments, particularly online learning environments (Laurillard, 2002; Center for Research in Distance and Adult Learning, 2003). However there appears very little reported research that has explored the types of physical learning environments or resources students use for on-line studying. For this research, a physical learning environment is defined as the place or physical surroundings where a student can gain knowledge or skills either by themselves, or by interaction with a teacher or other students. This paper details the use of an online survey instrument that has been developed to explore the types of physical learning environments students use when studying a course that is presented on-line. The variables used for the data analysis were male/female, mature age/school leaver and flex/on-campus. The research that is currently in progress focuses on examining the physical learning environments used by both on campus and distance students. At Central Queensland University (CQU) distance students are referred to as flex students. This paper reports on the types of physical learning environments and resources used by flex students and then compare this usage to that of on-campus studnets.