LTEC GRADUATE STUDENT PERCEPTION ON ACCLETRATED CLASSES 1

LTEC Graduate Student Perception on Accelerated Classes

Carl Raines

LTEC 5610.20
LTEC GRADUATE STUDENT PERCEPTION ON ACCELERATED COURSEWORK 2

Abstract
This study collects and analyses LTEC (learning technologies) graduate student perceptions on
accelerated online classes. The students come from either the standard online class 5210, or an
accelerated online class 5610. They will be surveyed on their opinions and preferences with
regards to their accelerated course work, with a focus on project preferences, skills acquisition,
and faculty support. Their overall age will also be an important factor.
Keywords: LTEC, graduate students, student perception, accelerated online classes, student age

Introduction
As universities change and adapt to new technology, potential student accessibility has
improved. Online accelerated classes at accredited universities allow students to continue their
pursuit of higher education without having to be on a college campus. They can be used to better
fit the distinctly different lives of students who return to school, whose age and usual full-time
employment make them stand out from undergraduate students who take classes on a university
campus. Perks of online accelerated classes allow for students to work and continue their
education in different cities and even states, with a focus on more segmented and faster
completion. Studies have been done on undergraduate and graduate student perception of online,
accelerated, and online accelerated classes, but less focus has been applied to LTEC (learning
technologies) graduate students. This research would be useful in improving class structure to
better accommodate students.

Review of the Literature

Student perception of graduate -level accelerated classes, available in other disciplines,
does not seem to be present with LTEC. This might be because of the relative newness of the
field, so a helpful comparison can be found in a similar field like teacher education. In Stephen
Grounds’ (1996) piece Accelerated degrees and their use in teacher education, Grounds
personally defines accelerated degrees as a “lead to a Bachelor's qualification for students with
no previous experience in higher education and which run for one year less than by traditional
routes and without significant loss in content.” (pg. 13). While Ground’s definition and overall
writing focuses on teacher education undergraduate work, he does later address a similar
potential in graduate level work. Unfortunately, outside of this helpful definition of what can be
considered an accelerated class, the rest of Ground’s writing is framed within the Leverhulme’s
Report, a then-relevant UK report that seemed to focus on the financial and qualifying factors of
higher education programs. Ground’s sentiment and definition are helpful, but his framework, if
not restrictions, would not be applicable.
A field with a useful a breadth of research on accelerated classes is nursing. The topics
ranged from student perception of accelerated classes with regards to programs and
opportunities, student performance competing standard classes versus accelerated classes, and
finally what nursing skills students felt they were genuinely learning. Martha Kemsley et al.’s
(2014) study Analysis of Graduates' Perceptions of an Accelerated Bachelor of Science Program
in Nursing is structurally the most important of the three studies that will be discussed because it
LTEC GRADUATE STUDENT PERCEPTION ON ACCELERATED COURSEWORK 3

heavily influenced the creation of this LTEC study. The U.S. based study starts by addressing the
need for accelerated nursing programs as a means to combat the country’s growing dearth of
nurses. The passage “WITH PROJECTIONS OF the need for more than a million new and
replacement registered nurses by the year 2016” (pg. 50) frames accelerated bachelor and
graduate level classes as a necessary venue to mitigate this drop.
This assertion continues by discussing how the accelerated classes are modified to
accommodate students who are trying to get into nursing from different unrelated fields. Some of
these fields included psychology, social work, business administration, and environmental
science. In their pursuit to study graduate student perception, Kemsley et al. learned that students
valued the following programs and opportunities highest: internships with opportunities to
practice skills, the presentation of graduate level course work, and internships with opportunities
to explore special interest areas. Open ended questions also provided useful observations, with
42 percent of responses speaking positively of the fast-paced nature of the year long program,
and 42 percent of responses speaking positively of the support they received from faculty and
staff. Kemsley et al.’s study helps promote the positive potential of accelerated classes.
In Leslie K. Payne, Tina Glaspie, and Catherine Rosser’s (2014) study Comparison of
Select Outcomes Between Traditional and Accelerated BSN Programs: A Pilot Study,
undergraduate student performance was gauged between nursing students in traditional classes
versus accelerated classes. The study’s literature review posited that nursing students who were
in accelerated courses had higher GPA averages than traditional students, but this higher average
was not conducive to passing ratio for other nursing evaluations like Health Education Systems,
Inc. (HESI) or NCLEX. They found studies that said the higher GPA from students in
accelerated classes reflected higher success at HESI and NCLEX, but they also found some
research that showed that accelerated student GPA did not make much of a difference. The study
discovered an interesting age range average for both class types. The traditional classes had an
average age of 22 and the accelerated classes had an average age of 27. This focus on how age
ranges dictates a noticeable preference for accelerated classes will be useful in this LTEC
perception study.
In Susan McNiesh, Patricia Benner, and Catherine Chesla’s (2011) study Learning
Formative Skills of Nursing Practice in an Accelerated Program, they wanted to clearly define
the clinical skills the graduate students genuinely felt they were learning. The study used
phenomenology methods, defined in the text as “Phenomenologists strive to uncover the taken-
for granted and tacit meanings behind skills and practices, and their interconnectedness” (pg. 52),
to gather and analyze their findings. They categorized their findings into theme, which ranged
from developing personal authority, to developing agency by performing physical skills, to
developing habits and styles of practice. What makes Susan McNiesh, Patricia Benner, and
Catherine Chesla’s study relevant to LTEC student perception is that the focus on physical
actions turning into learned skills can be applied to LTEC class projects, research, and papers.
During their data collection, they interviewed graduate students and asked them to present a
narrative of situations of caring for patients. This shows that providing students ample area for
LTEC GRADUATE STUDENT PERCEPTION ON ACCELERATED COURSEWORK 4

short answer and written reflection should be incorporated into the LTEC student perception data
collection.
To add a layer of distinction to the LTEC accelerated course work is the fact that it is all
online, unlike the previously discussed nursing accelerated programs that could incorporate both.
While Leslie K. Payne, Tina Glaspie, and Catherine Rossers’s previously discussed study
comparing nursing student performance regarding standard classes versus online classes, some
extra historical research on online course proficiency is needed. A study that further discusses
the pros and cons of online course work would be M. O. Thirunarayanan and Aixa Perez-Prado’s
(2001) study Comparing Web-Based and Classroom Based Learning: A Quantitative Study. M.
O. Thirunarayanan and Aixa Perez-Prado’s purpose was to see how well online only students
compared against their in-class counterparts, which was intended to show the potential value of
online classes as an educational platform.
Their study results discovered that online and in-class students tested about the same
once tested at the end of a semester, but online students had a bigger improvement because of
underperforming at the start of the semester. Unlike the relatively recent study by Leslie K.
Payne, Tina Glaspie, and Catherine Rosser that was written in a time where online classes were
more accepted, M. O. Thirunarayanan and Aixa Perez-Prado’s is an early pioneer that had to
convince others of the importance online classes.
One final observation returns to Leslie K. Payne, Tina Glaspie, and Catherine Rosser’s
study and its finding regarding graduate student ages. In LaVonne Fedynich, Karen Sue Bradley,
and Jack Bradley’s (2015) study Graduate Students' Perceptions of Online Learning, 249
graduate level students ranging from Arts and Sciences to Agriculture, Natural Resources, and
Human Sciences were surveyed on their perceptions on online classes. As shown in their results
“38% were 20-29 years old, 28.5% were 30-39 years old, 20% were 40-49 years old and 11.6%
were over 50 years old” (pg. 4), online graduate classes had a large range of ages. Combing both
studies gives the impressions that online accelerated classes would feature a larger number of
students aged thirty and older.

Significance of the Study

While there are noticeable studies on graduate student perceptions of online course work, such as
LaVonne Fedynich, Karen Sue Bradley, and Jack Bradley’s (2015) study Graduate Students'
Perceptions of Online Learning, none of it seems to focus exclusively on Learning Technology
graduate students. Perhaps because tools housed in Learning Technologies are more readily
incorporated into other fields, the technology might overshadow the students themselves.

Research Questions or Hypothesis

Student perception of LTEC accelerated course work will be positive.

Method(s)
The study will be modeled on the study that inspired this one, Martha Kemsley et all.’s (2011)
research entitled Analysis of Graduates' Perceptions of an Accelerated Bachelor of Science
LTEC GRADUATE STUDENT PERCEPTION ON ACCELERATED COURSEWORK 5

Program in Nursing, wherein they used a mixed-method that requested qualitative and
quantitative information through a survey. While their survey involved twenty-five perception
and opinion questions in the 5-Likert Scale ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree, this
LTEC study will limit that instead to fifteen questions for the sake of improving response rates.
Age of the student will have great relevance, as discussed earlier in this study. A few open-ended
questions will also be included, for instance “what was the best project in an accelerated class
you have taken” and “what was the worst project in an accelerated class you have taken”, as
Kemsley et al. (2011) argues that it helps create a helpful theme to study.

Research Setting and Participants

The setting will be online, with a response time consisting of three weeks after the spring
semester ends. After that time has passed, the survey will be closed. The participants will be
graduate students in two different LTEC courses, the accelerated course 5610 and the standard
course 5210, with around twenty students per class.

Data Generation/Collection
Both LTEC 5610 and 5210 graduate students will be surveyed once the Spring semester has
finished. They will be given a survey through Qualtrics, an online program that allows the user
to make and distribute surveys, that will ask them about their most recent two semesters of
accelerated classes. The data from the surveys will be plugged into the SPSS extension of
Qualtrics.

Data Analysis
The data will be analyzed to see which aspects of LTEC accelerated classes score favorably or
unfavorably with students. This will be tested against the hypothesis that LTEC accelerated
classes will be favored for various reasons, like availability and flexibility with regards to the
student’s work life. The open-ended questions at the end of the survey will provide a theme that
will help codify overall student perception, be it overall positive or negative.

Rigor and Trustworthiness

The original idea was to send out surveys during the last few weeks of the spring semester, but
this idea was dropped in favor of testing after the semester because of the perception that it
would improve student participation and feedback. Since the survey would realistically be
optional, there is concern about low student response. Each class was going to be given two
slightly different surveys in order to accommodate potential differences, but this was altered to
one due to concerns that one survey would have far fewer responses than the other. Since it is
opinion based, and thus subjective, the trustworthiness is based on the individual student and the
student’s comfort at being potentially negative.

Anticipated Results
The results are expected to have similarities with the studies mentioned in the literature review
that influenced the design and creation of this study. Factors like graduate students who average
LTEC GRADUATE STUDENT PERCEPTION ON ACCELERATED COURSEWORK 6

an older age denoting a preference for online accelerated course work and graduate students
preferring work that lets them build direct skills will be expected. This means that an absence of
these opportunities for skill building work will test negatively with graduate students. The
expectation regarding positive perception on the student’s part is grounded in the positive
outlooks these other graduate students had regarding their accelerated programs.
LTEC GRADUATE STUDENT PERCEPTION ON ACCELERATED COURSEWORK 7

References

Fedynich, L., Bradley, K.S. & Bradley, J. (2015). Graduate Students' Perceptions of Online
Learning. Research in Higher Education Journal, 27,. Retrieved May 1, 2018
from https://www.learntechlib.org/p/160177/.

Grounds, S. (1996). Accelerated degrees and their use in teacher education. Cambridge
Journal Of Education, 26(2), 159.

Kemsley, M., Mccausland, L., Feigenbaum, J., & Riegle, E. (2011). Analysis of Graduates
Perceptions of an Accelerated Bachelor of Science Program in Nursing. Journal of
Professional Nursing, 27(1), 50-58. doi:10.1016/j.profnurs.2010.09.006

McNiesh, S., Benner, P., & Chesla, C. (2011). Learning Formative Skills of Nursing Practice in
an Accelerated Program. Qualitative Health Research, 21(1), 51-61.
doi:10.1177/1049732310378654

M.O.Thirunarayanan, & Perez-Prado, A. (2001). Comparing Web-Based and Classroom-Based

Learning: A Quantitative Study. Journal Of Research On Technology In
Education, 34(2), 131-137.

Payne, L. K., Glaspie, T., & Rosser, C. (2014). Comparison of Select Outcomes Between
Traditional and Accelerated BSN Programs: A Pilot Study. Nursing Education
Perspectives (National League For Nursing), 35(5), 332-334. doi:10.5480/12-988.1