Cathy Stone's research while affiliated with Newcastle University and other places
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Publications (36)
From being largely at the margins of higher education for many years, online learning now finds itself in the mainstream. This paper offers a critique of the online learning literature both pre- and post-2020, looking at changes in response to this shift. Evidence tells us that online learning plays a significant role in enhancing student equity, w...
For regional students, going to university frequently involves moving away from important home, family and community connections to forge new connections in unfamiliar environments. This is a daunting prospect discouraging many from considering university as an option. But what if university could come to them, allowing them to stay where they feel...
Across Australia, students at regional, rural and remote high schools are considerably less likely to go to university than their metropolitan counterparts. One of the ways in which universities try to help to bridge this gap is to organise visits to such schools, with the purpose of familiarising students with the idea of university and encouragin...
Online study is generally associated with the terms flexible and flexibility. Many students choose to study online specifically for the flexibility that is offered, hoping they can combine their studies with multiple other responsibilities in their lives. For students living in regional and rural areas, such flexibility can be even more important,...
For Australian university students living out of reach of a campus and studying online, the growing presence of Regional University Centres (RUCs) is changing their student experience for the better. People from regional areas of Australia are historically under-represented at university. Those who begin university are at higher risk of not complet...
University students who live and work in regional, rural and remote areas face challenges in studying at a distance from their institution's metropolitan or satellite campus. For mature-aged students in particular, relocating to a city campus is unrealistic, due to their family and employment commitments, and travel time and costs. A pragmatic alte...
This conceptual article asserts the importance of building and sustaining trust between higher education students and practitioners within the online environment. Instilling trust can construct sustainable learning environments that are abundant with collaborative inquiry and dialogue. In this article, we highlight and investigate the conceptual co...
Online educators must establish the kinds of trust that are uncommon in didactic, mechanical pedagogies. This conceptual paper asserts the importance of building and sustaining trust between higher education students and their instructors within the online environment. Instilling trust can construct sustainable learning environments that are abunda...
This article is a collective response to the 2020 iteration of The Manifesto for Teaching Online. Originally published in 2011 as 20 simple but provocative statements, the aim was, and continues to be, to critically challenge the normalization of education as techno-corporate enterprise and the failure to properly account for digital methods in tea...
The proportion of Australian students enrolling in a fully distance, online mode has been increasing over the past decade across a range of courses, including initial teacher education (ITE). The COVID-19 pandemic has further increased the need to teach and design courses in ways that successfully engage students online. This research set out to ga...
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, universities worldwide were already increasingly offering online, distance modes of study, including open access courses such as MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) alongside degree programs. Students from backgrounds and circumstances historically under-represented in higher education have been traditionally...
Online educators must establish the kinds of trust that are uncommon in didactic, mechanical pedagogies. This conceptual paper asserts the importance of building and sustaining trust between higher education students and their instructors within the online environment. Instilling trust can construct sustainable learning environments that are abunda...
Through its more flexible approach, online learning is providing a significant opportunity for further widening of participation in Australian higher education. Increasingly, students from backgrounds and circumstances historically under-represented in higher education are able to enter online postgraduate programs based on prior learning and work...
To combat high failure and student drop-out rates, universities have developed strategies to monitor online student engagement through measurable activities. In this study, we explore if and how these monitoring activities accurately measure online engagement. We interviewed nine highly engaged online third-year students throughout a semester to fi...
Much has been written about the growing influence and reach of online learning in higher education, including the opportunities that this can offer for improving student equity and widening participation. One area of student equity in which online learning has an influence is that of gender equity, particularly for mature-age students. This article...
Although there is ample research into student engagement in online learning, much of this investigates the student experience through surveys administered at a fixed point in time, usually at the exit point of a single unit of study or course. The study described in this paper, by contrast, aimed to understand online student engagement over a whole...
The university student population in Australia contains increasing numbers of older students returning to learning after a significant gap in their educational journey. Many are choosing to enrol online to combine their studies with other time-consuming responsibilities. This article examines the nature of this online student experience with a focu...
Many first-in-family (FiF) students begin their university journey not as traditional school leavers, but as mature-age students who have busy family lives, often with young children, as well as working lives to manage. While families can be powerful sources of inspiration, support and encouragement, their demands and expectations can also be probl...
This chapter draws upon a strengths perspective that seeks to frame first-in-family (FiF) students not as ‘lacking’ or as ‘deficit’ but rather as a cohort replete with cultural wealths. Building on Bourdieuian theories and referring explicitly to the work of Yosso (2005), the capabilities and cultural strengths of this older FiF cohort are revealed...
This chapter explores how the first-in-family (FiF) cohort is theorised and defined in various geographical and cultural contexts. Beginning with a critique around a lack of clarity of this cohort, the chapter moves to a review of related topics within the broad field of university participation and student engagement. O’Shea, May, Stone and Delahu...
This book examines the university experiences of first-in-family university students, and how these students’ decisions to return to education impact upon their family members and significant others. While it is well known that parental educational background has a substantial impact on the educational levels of family and dependents, it is unclear...
This chapter investigates the experiences of first-in-family (FiF) enabling students as they reflect on their participation in university. Due to the widening participation agenda, this cohort is increasing annually in Australia although they are little researched. The data have been harvested from interviews and surveys and analysed using biograph...
Drawing on international literature on higher education (HE) access and participation, this chapter provides an overview of current research and writing in this field. The ‘widening participation’ agenda is critically reviewed in relation to neo-liberal discourses of the independent learner and the ‘risky’ nature of university deconstructed. The ch...
While first-in-family (FiF) women’s experience of attending university has been examined in a growing body of literature, there has been little attention to the experiences of FiF males. This chapter presents an account of the motivations, transitions and participations of FiF male students using a narrative gender framework. The analysis especiall...
Online learning has an important place in widening access and participation in higher education (HE) for diverse student cohorts. One cohort taking up online study in increasing numbers is that of mature-age first-in-family (FiF) students. This chapter looks at the experience of 87 FiF students, for whom the opportunity to enrol in online undergrad...
It is widely recognised that access to university has become necessary for fuller, healthier and more satisfying participation in post-industrial society, as well as for the attainment and maintenance of national prosperity. As a result of this understanding, universities have been strongly encouraged by governments across the globe to widen partic...
O’Shea, May, Stone and Delahunty have indicated how attending university for first-in-family (FiF) students can lead to significant personal transformation but highlight how the embodied nature of this experience can remain hidden or overlooked in the literature. Equally, the effects that university participation has on those around the student rem...
Entering formal university study as the first person in one’s immediate family to do so is inevitably a major challenge. This chapter discusses some of the key factors that influenced the first-in-family (FiF) students who participated in Study B (as discussed in Chap. 1) to make the decision to undertake formal study at university level. It also e...
Much of the literature on university access and participation positions people from disadvantaged backgrounds as those who have not ‘traditionally’ attended university. Certain student cohorts are presented as lacking the skills or requisite knowledges to achieve academic success, requiring additional assistance from institutions to address these g...
This paper examines the idea of the university from the first-in-family enabling students’ perspective. It provides an overview of the current crisis of meaning in scholarly commentary that points to a spectrum of meanings about the university. This spectrum ranges from the ancient imaginary of the monastic university as ‘ivory tower’ to the instru...
Online learning has an important place in widening access and participation in higher education for diverse student cohorts. One cohort taking up online study in increasing numbers is that of matureage, first-in-family students. First-in-family is defined as those who are the first in their immediate family, including parents, siblings, partners an...
This article outlines a collaborative study between higher education institutions in Australia, which qualitatively explored the online learning experience for undergraduate and postgraduate students. The project adopted a narrative inquiry approach and encouraged students to story their experiences of this virtual environment, providing a snapshot...
This paper draws upon the metaphor of the “hero’s journey” to further analyse seven stories of women returning to education. These stories have formed the basis of a recent book publication by the authors (Stone & O’Shea, 2012) and are derived from two complementary but separate research studies (O’Shea, 2007; Stone, 2008). None of the women featur...
Over the past two decades there has been a growing global movement towards improving access to higher education for a much wider student cohort. New pathways into university have been forged and there has been an increasing focus on encouraging people from many different backgrounds to enter and succeed at university. No longer is the typical stude...
Citations
... Such research has provided invaluable understanding of students' perceptions of online teaching and learning practices (e.g., Martin et al., 2019) and both teachers' and students' satisfaction with OTL (e.g., Alqurashi, 2018;Bolliger et al., 2010). Furthermore, analyses based on written language have identified affordances of OTL for teacher education (Downing et al., 2019), allowing practitioners to overcome the challenges inherent in teaching online (e.g., Baran & Al Zoubi, 2020;Limperos et al., 2015). However, while concentrating solely on written language may have been appropriate in examining early examples of OLT, advances in computing and networking mean that it is now easy to integrate a wider range of semiotic resources and modes into 2 the OLE. ...
... Professors, students, and managers in these institutions were not asked whether they want to do it; they were required in order to prevent the spread of the virus within the community. Online education offered the opportunity of flexibility in a time when professors and students could not meet face to face [1]. Black et al. [2] considered "online education as an opportunity equalizer", offering access even to those in less-developed regions, of course, with the condition of having the necessary technical infrastructure (internet connection, devices for connecting online). ...
... Replicating relationality through digital means can be limited through the loss of non-verbal aspects of communication. However, Payne et al., (2022) argue that due to the ongoing necessity of online education and the affordances this can offer, facilitating trust between teachers and students (particularly those from First Nations) is important. Like collaboration, this requires knowledge of relationality from a discipline culture context, capability in the digital technologies and pedagogical practices which build relationality and trust through the online or physical context. ...
... This meant balancing Transactional Distance, such that they received sufficient structure to reduce stress and develop fluidity with content, but were offered sufficient opportunities for dialogue to satisfy autonomy over their learning journey (Moore, 2019). Further, it required a focus on the engagement factors known to support non-traditional student cohort retention, including prioritising regular dialogue and meaningful engagement activities, welcoming the sharing of their own experiences as part of the learning process, and encouraging positive engagement and reflective discussions with other students in the class (Stone, Downing, & Dyment, 2021;Stone & O'Shea, 2019). ...
... Pero el bando de los «apocalípticos» ha matizado mucho estos argumentos desde entonces (MacKenzie et al., 2021). Si todos/as reconocen los méritos de las nuevas tecnologías por permitir la continuidad de las clases en su formato online, también se ha pasado a una visión más crítica en cuanto a su puesta en obra. ...
... Other explorations in this area have focused on the new challenges that this context carries for the assessment of pre-service teachers, their collaboration through learning communities, the use of technology for activities related to the practicum, and practicum supervision [60][61][62][63]. In these challenges, researchers highlighted the efforts of teacher educators in keeping continuous communication with pre-service teachers despite technological difficulties in different countries [64][65][66], and their role in emotional care [67,68]. ...
... Research suggests students can be demotivated (Dyment et al., 2020;Motz et al., 2021) by repetitive tasks, particularly when they do not see real-world applications for their classwork. Most undergraduate work is not only a weak simulacrum of academic work (as it is often disconnected from a larger conversation and peer-review process) but also significantly different from much of the student's experience outside of the classroom. ...
... Further, almost one third of all parttime students are parents, many being mature aged (aged 21 years and over). While acknowledging that gender is not binary, research on mature-aged students has shown that gender roles of women as 'carers' and men as 'breadwinners' are still predominantly traditional in Australia (Stone & O'Shea, 2013, 2019. As such, women are expected to tailor their study around caring responsibilities, whereas men often have the privilege of allocated study time separate to other demands (Stone & O'Shea, 2013, 2019. ...
... Several studies relate students' engagement and learning outcomes to online learning. Muir et al. (2019) suggested that educational outcomes, student retention rates and completion time can be improved in online learning by understanding the factors that influence student engagement. The literature on pedagogic excellence has placed student engagement as central to effective and deep-level learning, student satisfaction and retention (Cents-Boonstra et al., 2021;Kahu et al., 2019;Kuh et al., 2008). ...
... This may be due to a variety of factors, including the multimedia nature of the content (Kalyuga 2012). Online learners also tend to be older than their on-campus counterparts and are often juggling multiple responsibilities such as work and family (Stone and O'Shea 2019). For these reasons, we speculate that reducing cognitive load by limiting the number of simultaneous units may be particularly beneficial for online students, underpinning the more pronounced increase in success observed for the online cohort in this study. ...