This student applied for the course from the UK, but has moved to the United States due to family circumstances. Discussions with the University and the online nature of the course have allowed her to pursue the course internationally.
This student had no difficulties choosing a course and University other than in making the final decision as with all students. She was still in the UK and was able to attend open days and meet tutors to aid her decision.
Karen applied for and accepted the course in the United Kingdom. She applied online and had no difficulty doing so. On hearing that she was moving to the US, she conducted most of her conversations with course tutors by email, sometimes by telephone. No problems were encountered here although sometimes mixed messages slipped through and needed further clarification.
The student had fortunately completed her move and was all setup with computer and internet connection in the US. While she didn't have any notable technical problems, on reading some of the chatter posts she started to feel a little homesick, and was becoming aware of the fact that for her, the environment was very asynchronous - if she posted messages in the late evening in California, it would be equivalent to 3-4am GMT and she'd be unlikely to receive a reply until the following day, when she was usually at work until the equivalent of 1am GMT. All her own discussion threads were diluted because of the delay - and she came home to hundreds of posts per night, many of which belonged to topics which had opened, and sometimes seemingly closed, that very day.
Karen felt more confident later in the course, because the early frenzy of posting had died down and she was able to participate in discussion of the week's reading at a more leisurely pace. However, the scheduled activities proved to be impossible: there was no time of day where she could meet with the UK students except at weekends, and some students had commitments at these times too. Even when the tutor introduced different groups for the exercises as a response, Karen felt embarrassed that other students might be put out by her time zone difference.
While I felt comfortable using the web software and keeping up with the reading, my physical environment proved to be the real issue. Even for a virtual course there were some unexpected real life problems to try and resolve, like the need for sleep! Especially with the real time chats that I missed out on, I felt I was being excluded by my own situation - even though I had alternatives to go to, the whole group had been broken up because of my needs.
Out of the group, Karen seemed to be least disadvantaged by her situation. The course was virtual to begin with and so location shouldn't really have mattered. Time differences did play a big part in developing coping strategies, however, and while she didn't experience any actual setbacks in sticking to the course schedule, she did have to readjust her habits and lifestyle around the course.
Karen's specific situation is a very infrequent occurrence, and it seems there is little that academic and support staff can do to compensate in this respect. But in a globalising education system, time differences may play an increasingly important role in judging what is possible to pursue the goals of the course without disadvantaging the students in some way. Synchronous activities are usually immensely helpful - for those who are able to turn up. For those who aren't, for whatever reason, there must be a meaningful equivalent; not just a recording of the sessions, but something with involvement entailed. Am example of this could be that rather than congregating the group into their own chat room, students are encouraged to visit some (pre-tested) open-access web chat rooms at whatever time they can manage, and then report back to the group with their results. However, apart from these content considerations, it is vitally important that the course tutors provide a cohesive role in preventing some students from being time-alienated, and that they establish a frequent communication mechanism to ensure that the long-distance branches are still content with the mechanisms.