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Abstract

Online courses can be isolating experiences, as many students need a high level of discipline and structure to complete coursework. The impact of COVID-19 caused major disruptions to higher education particularly for teaching and learning in early 2020. Teo and Williams’ (2005) framework for effective online learning was applied to this study to learn of its utility for asynchronous graduate student learning. Eight students taking courses in an online asynchronous graduate program in higher education were interviewed for this study. The findings indicated that not all of Teo and Williams’ sub-environments described students’ asynchronous learning experience during COVID-19, with additional ones more applicable to the non-traditional population of students in the program. Engagement and success depended on discussion board importance to instruction, environmental and cultural impacts on learning, need for support, and faculty communication. Students were less impacted by the evaluative and collaborative components of the framework, likely due to being accustomed to these approaches with little transition from pre- and post-COVID teaching and learning practices.

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