Building Bridges - E-Infrastructures and Technologies for Lifelong Learning - page 244

The mean final grade was significantly higher for
students agreeing with this statement at any level
(i.e., either “agree” or “strongly agree”) than for
those responding neutral or disagree (any level)
( M Agree = 81.52, SD = 5.77; M Neutral or Disagree = 75.94,
SD = 5.46, p <.05). In addition, we found that the
mean final mark was marginally significantly
higher for students responding “agree” (any level)
than for those responding neutral or disagree (any
level) to the statement, “The instructor was sensi-
tive to my individual needs as a student” ( M Agree
= 80.96, SD = 5.54; M Neutral or Disagree = 75.69, SD
= 6.22, p <.1). These results suggest that there
is value to students in opportunities for them to
participate and to feel supported, as those who
participated and felt supported tended to perform
better in the course.

suggests their experience was positive. There was
also a difference in students' ratings of teaching
staff, which is interesting, but we cannot discern
whether these reflect differences due to location
or that they were assessing different people.
We must also bear in mind that it is impossible
to confirm the null hypothesis - that there is no
difference between the two conditions. We feel,
however, that our use of existing course evaluation
scale items combined with validation from our
qualitative data support our claims.

Student-Instructor Interaction

We next looked for evidence of interaction between
students using all three participation options -
local, satellite and remote - and the instructors.
Students participating in all of these ways did
interact, and Table 1 shows there were no statis-
tically significant differences between campuses
in students' perceived ability to participate easily
and as much as they wanted. Nonetheless, there
were some issues and complications mentioned
by students in interviews.
Some simply found it uncomfortable to speak
into a microphone to a group of people they did
not know. This satellite student, for example said:

Student Experience

To assess student experience with the modified
ePresence system, we first looked at questionnaire
data. Results (see Table 1) suggest that student
experience at the satellite campus was adequate,
but not equivalent to that of the students at the
local campus. Students at both campuses tended
to rate the course favorably, with means for both
campuses above the midpoint on a 7-point Likert
scale, and no statistically significant difference
between them. Students at the satellite campus also
tended to disagree that they would rather travel than
use the ePresence system (t = 1.78, p <.1), which

I sometimes find it a little uncomfortable to get
the microphone and talk across to the professor.
We've never actually met the professor physically
yet so it's unusual to a certain degree (SS2).

Table 1. Final questionnaire response results

Local Campus (N=32) Satellite Campus (N=8)

Mean SD Mean SD

Course Quality 5.26 .89 4.86 1.42
Teaching Staff** 5.66 .76 4.44 1.54
Awareness 4.33 1.11 4.15 1.46
Would rather travel than use system* 3.33 1.92 2.13 3.08
Ease of Participation 4.79 1.23 4.56 1.21
Notes: All items are on a 7-point Likert Scale, where 1= Strongly Disagree and 7 = Strongly Agree. Asterisks indicate statistically significant
mean differences as follows: * p <=.1; ** p <.05.