Online Learning Environments: What Early Childhood Teacher Education Students Say

Abstract

As online environments gain an increasing presence in higher education for both on-campus students and distance learners, there is a need to examine how effective these environments are for student learning. Online environments require essentially different teaching and learning strategies from those used in the traditional face-to-face contexts (for on-campus students) or with print-based material (for distance learners). This article identifies early childhood teacher education students' perceptions of their learning experiences with the advent of an online learning environment. Perceptions of on-campus and distance learners are compared, and implications for teacher education staff interested in providing high quality learning environments within an online space are discussed.