Online students' learning needs centre on course support and communication with tutors and other students¶
Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · qualitativer3·q2
Currency · newest study 2025 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person · recheck by 2030: baselines and conditions change
Subclaims¶
Reading the evidence codes
q is the design tier, i the impact, n the sample, and the kind with its r
the rigour judged within that kind: what each code means.
This claim: no standardized effect is recorded in observations/ for it yet, so no benchmark reading is possible.
q2 i? The learning needs of online undergraduate students studying a new course relate to course support, communication with tutors and other students, tutorials, individual help, motivation, and induction. → Herodotou 2025
Evidence¶
Herodotou 2025¶
Herodotou, C., Shrestha, S., Comfort, C., Andrews, H., Mulholland, P., Bayer, V., Maguire, C., Lee, J. & Fernandez, M. (2025). A Participatory Approach to Designing a Student-Facing Dashboard for Online and Distance Education. Journal of Learning Analytics, 12(2). https://doi.org/10.18608/jla.2025.8481
q2 · i? · qualitative · r3
Thematic analysis of a screening questionnaire completed by 20 distance learning students identified learning needs, grouped into themes including module support, communication with tutors, tutorials, individual help, and induction. The article reports that "communication with tutors" and course support were the dominant themes.
"The learning needs of online students, when they are studying a new course, are related to course support, communication with tutors, tutorials, individual help, motivation, and induction"
Discussion¶
Related Claims¶
- The student-tutor relationship alone is judged insufficient: peer mixing and virtual communities are needed to counter isolation in online research supervision — related
- A descriptive report defines peer assisted learning and asserts, without a tested result, that it promotes knowledge construction, collaboration ability and interpersonal interaction — related
- Undergraduate computing students report help-seeking avoidance and anxiety, with 62.5% sometimes avoiding asking for help even when needed and 75% reporting anxiety when not understanding a topic — related
- Drop-in one-to-one tutorial attendees improved P1X-to-P1Y marks while the class average declined — related
- Personal instructor messages and reflective assignments showed the largest individual associations with online course satisfaction, and personal messages with fewer motivation problems — related
Page metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
type |
claim |
id |
online-students-learning-needs-support-communication |
title |
Online students' learning needs centre on course support and communication with tutors and other students |
description |
Online students' learning needs centre on course support and communication with tutors and other students |
status |
review |
evidence_strength |
moderate |
newest_evidence |
2025 |
recheck_by |
2030 |
generated |
by process:wiki-ingest on 2026-10-08 |
trust |
unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content |
sources |
1 — herodotou-2025 |
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