This student comes from a low-income family, and was attracted to University by the increase in widening access programmes. He performed above expectations at school but does not own a computer and as such has had little interaction with the internet and virtual environments. He has been accepted onto the online course but cannot afford to buy a computer.
Tim has no computer, so was browsing from a library or public space, or selecting from a paper prospectus. He was also looking for information on grants and for good PC deals. Would the institution be prepared in this case to provide IT equipment and support? If none of these possibilities is foreseen, the applicant's failure to apply will not even be noted by the institution and so the problem may never be corrected.
If applying offline, the student is unlikely to encounter any problems. Online, however, the application process may be protracted due to public 'net access usage limits - a username/password system is imperative here to prevent the applicant becoming frustrated with lack of experience/time. Tim managed to apply online because he booked a long session specifically for apply, but this may not be the case for most applicants.
Assuming the student has received their computer, and arranged internet access, this week will be more about orientation with the operating system / PC than with the VLE and other students. If the student hasn't received the computer, the student will be panicked and must contact the University to get Computing Support involved. The possibility of borrowing a loan laptop in the interim is likely, but eventually there will be a switch-over period to their own computer, which may have a time impact on their studies.
Tim contacted his tutor early on and Computing Support were able to get his machine up and running, and ready for the VLE, by the middle of week 2. The delay was logistical - Tim lives more than 300 miles from the University. Until this point he'd been using an open-access machine in the local public library, for which he had to book half-hourly slots in advance. He printed off most of the course materials early on (at a cost) and so was able to study offline until his computer was active. However, though this meant he was up to speed with reading, his interactions with the rest of the class and ability to explore the virtual environment and the internet were constrained, and he found he had a lot of social and discursive catching up to do in the second part of this semester.
Although I was delayed in getting into the course, I knew this was likely because I didn't have my own computer and had chosen an online course. I printed off the notes etc. quite early on and so was able to keep track of the course even when disconnected. This allowed me to raise discussions and comment later in the course, although I did find that some of the points had already been raised and the topics seemed dead.
Tim's progress was clearly hindered by technical problems, but his initiative and fortune in having usable alternatives meant that he didn't experience a marked delay in getting to grips with the course. His score of -3 is equal to that of Francesca and Fiona, both of whom have substantiated English processing difficulties. It's also possible that since Tim was technologically evolved as part of the course, his academic impetus was also heightened and he found more enjoyment in exploring the web both as part of the course and as a recreational activity.
Although more and more families are purchasing and acclimatising to computers, there is still a significant audience, of whom some children have a university aptitude, who haven't used or considered computers for educational purposes. There may be a large variety of degrees to which this detachment impacts on the education present in a virtual environment, from shifting a basic acquaintance with IVLE over to WebCT, to a complete lack of experience with the web and hyperlinking in general. Clearly the vendors of the VLE software are not in a position to provide such simplistic user support, and neither are the course tutors, who are rarely expert users with the software. The supporting role therefore comes down to the varying layers of Computing Services, and it is here too that there is often a wide gap in expertise - there are the well trained technical experts, and those with significant experience in desktop user support, but far less in the more specific field of training in usage of learning environments. If the student cannot find these mentors, then their whole learning experience will be devalued as a result of the institution choosing a virtual, rather than traditional, learning environment.