Studying Online;Succeeding through Distance Learning at University

DOI: 10.4324/9781003259695-9 

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Efective online collaboration 135 
Tis is an indication that students frequently collaborate. Tey 
study together, and they ask questions together. I appreciate, of 
course, that sometimes the small gang that arrives in my ofce 
to ask questions are merely providing moral support for a stu-
dent who is too nervous to come and seek clarifcation alone. Tey 
don’t want to appear stupid, so they ask a group of fellow students 
to accompany them. However, what the fearful student might not 
realise is that the friends they have brought along with them also 
want answers to the same question but were even more scared to 
admit they needed help. Even if students at campus universities 
are not collaborating with academic questions, they join forces to 
provide each other with support. 
For anyone studying online, this becomes much more complicated. 
When universities were forced to teach online during the height of 
the Covid pandemic, the option to join forces to support each other 
and ask a lecturer questions was not apparent to people. Unlike 
being able to turn up during ofce hours, the students who were 
forced into online study had no means of forming a little group and 
turning up to chat to a lecturer. Where I teach, we use Microsoft 
Teams as our principal online collaboration system. Tat has a 
series of symbols next to your name, which signals to other peo-
ple whether you are available or not. Tere is a red circle to show 
you are busy, for example, and a green tick to indicate you are free. 
I told my students that my online ofce hours were whenever my 
name had a green tick against it. I suggested that all they needed to 
do was give me a call on Microsoft Teams whenever they saw that 
green tick. However, almost none of my students used this online 
feature. When I was on campus, my ofce hours were busy with 
students popping in for a chat, asking questions or just saying “Hi”. 
As soon as teaching was transferred online, that behaviour 
stopped. Even though I said to students that I was happy for them 
to call me on Microsoft Teams whenever the green tick was dis-
played against my name, only two students did that in the year 
that covered the Covid lockdowns. I had started to wonder what 
the problem might have been when the answer came to me when 

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