Some online learners give indications of great frustrations with the learning / course management technologies, but they’ll do it without direct communications. They’ll send endless emails and treat those like TMs. They’ll send spam emails to the entire class with personal queries. They’ll post unopenable files, and when the first one doesn’t work, they’ll keep doing the same thing a half dozen times instead of just pasting their text into the HTML window.

They’ll ignore suggestions to change their behaviors, or they’ll even take offense at the suggestions made by their peers. Whether they do this intentionally or not (and it’s hard not to assume purposeful and intentional behaviors), this seems somewhat passive-aggressive.

It’s hard to know if this is just frustration with the technologies or the online learning format or something else altogether. Indeed, learning itself and learning alone may be sufficient grounds for frustrations.

Profiling by Online Behaviors

Well beyond the digital profiles students create of themselves in online classrooms, their behaviors really leave a strong impact. What they write, when they write, and how they treat their colleagues and the instructor are important factors.

Saved by Original Quality Work

Usually, I am not very understanding when people engage in “electronic sulking.” Teaching writing classes means a heavy work-load and plenty of learner support as-is, and trying to support a kind of civility becomes tedious quickly. However, I found my own attitude changing when a particular student who was doing all the above started posting very original and thoughtful work. In my rush to be efficient, I was not considering that there does have to be an outlet for e-learning frustrations…and these small challenges were just that.

I was focusing on my own frustrations and needed to be more patient. All said, it worked out fine. We’re all on track for a strong study term.