Stories of joy and despair in the virtual classroom

A new generation of digitally mediated distance education has fundamentally changed the tertiary education landscape. Thoughout the world, in 2010 an estimated 17 million students were studying through open and distance teaching institutions and this figure is growing exponentially. However, many distance education programmes have historically struggled to achieve greater than 50% retention. Distance education is common among mature-aged lifelong learners who study part-time. Data relating to campus-besed students cannot be transferred to distance students because they engage with their study very differently. Against this background, the current study examined what factors influence the student experience during the first few weeks of distance learning