Life in universities has rhythms and routines. However, these rhythms and routines do not necessarily apply to the day-‐‑to-‐‑day act of studying for students studying in the online mode. In contrast to attending as on-‐‑campus students, where lecture, tutorial and laboratory times are set by the institution, my student participants have schedules determined by their other (non-‐‑study)
commitments and interests. Time is not merely about how many hours per week are spent in study; it is expanded and concertinaed by existing routines, emerging priorities and immediate demands. Time allocation is an ongoing, pragmatic negotiation based on a series of compromises. Times for lectures, tutorials, accessing readings or e-‐‑publications are malleable for participants so they are the times most likely to be changed. Not only does time seem to speed up or slow down, it can be stretched or compressed to fit the needs of the individual and her/his context.
From the data, lived time for the student participants appeared as a complex concept. While all participants identified the temporal flexibility which distance online study provided as one of the major, if not the primary, reason for studying in this mode, it also presented problems of new temporal determinants, and subsequently accepting responsibility for their own time management. Whether on a daily, weekly or semester basis, the rationale underpinning scheduling their study time was based, as much as possible, in their personal context. As Tricia’s experience exemplified, sudden changes demanded a reconfiguration of routines, and study was the first to suffer: This year I got a job
and that really threw everything into the air. Now I am over committed and I’m finding that study is the thing that is getting squeezed in around everything else.
Tricia was offered work and family economics forced her to accept, although the timing was not opportune.
Similarly, Ida understood the flexible nature of time in her life as a student:
‘Cause I do a lot of things for them [family]. I still work around them; not so much my husband, but the kids -‐‑ always had to work around them, what sporting things after school: just the normal things that people do these days.
Ida knew that there were certain activities that afforded down-‐‑time from family duties: this down-‐‑ time provides an opportunity to study.
Lived time had yet another dimension for student participants. That is, the period of time during which they studied. Day-‐‑to-‐‑day time was enveloped in the future-‐‑oriented idea that the time put aside for study contributed to a desired outcome. They saw future gains, be they improvements in identity and image (the reinterpreting and re-‐‑representing of oneself), financial rewards or increasing control over their destiny. Time lost now from being with family and friends, from recreation activities and work for example, would produce better future outcomes including better control over future time use. When Mary says I think I’ll be a better teacher, it is because she feels that investing her time now will improve her professional skills for the future.
Lived time was in caught between the present, the need to have an income, and future ambitions. This represented a pivotal time for participants balancing more immediate gratification with potential gains as Tricia describes:
My boss puts me down for too many shifts and she won’t take no for an answer. I guess it is a real power struggle – the lure of, will I go somewhere today and make money or will I say: no I would not like to make money today; I would like to sit home and stare at my computer and work for my future.
She echoed the thoughts of many of the participants. Each participant mentioned the time it took as a part-‐‑time student, the pressure of the short term rewards of work and socialising as opposed to the long term commitment to become a teacher and the subsequent perceived rewards.
Within the context of lived time, then, time itself becomes a ‘bargainable’ quantity: playing off long and short term costs and benefits against each other. One participant, Bill, actually stopped working to study full-‐‑time to get to his endpoint – becoming a teacher – more quickly, as he explained: This year I’ve pulled the pin on working at schools. So I’m a full time student now, I guess; and father. [...] I just wanted to be so sure of this last year that I, I felt that getting away from work and just being able to focus solely on my studies and my family, were the important parts.
After a long time of looking forward to being a teacher, Bill was finally getting there. When we spoke last, he was completing his final unit and, after years of juggling work, family, recreational and social commitments could see the end. While many could empathise regarding the difficulty of juggling time priorities, very few people close to him could share the specific experiences that Bill has had as a distance online student.
Lived time was equally important when student participants considered when they studied. There were a range of approaches. Wanda and Geraldine exemplified a structured approach to time, developing a strict routine to control how time is “used”. Wanda provided details:
Every night seven o’clock in there – that’s it. And I usually get most of it done so that, unless there’s assignments on/ Well Mondays you know you open up that week’s unit do the weekly tasks, um, see what reading’s you’ve got to do, like I was doing three units a semester so Monday’d be this unit; Tuesday that unit and Wednesday that unit: and then you’d get the tasks done for each one. Thursday and Friday you can get any [discussion] board work that needed to be done, done and if there were assignments due, the board work stops and the assignments are the focus and just the next week, start it again.
Similarly, while Geraldine did not have as strict a work timetable as Wanda, she still had a regular routine: [If I’m not away from home] usually by nine, or half past nine I’m online and then I’ll have a break
over lunch and maybe for a little bit longer over lunch. Sometimes it’s ‘til about 3 or 4, because I’ve found that that time of the day is my very lethargic time of day. So, in the morning I can study really good, and then in the evening or later at night I can study really good. So basically, that’s my routine.
Most participants worked week by week, keeping pace with weekly lectures. However, there was often an expressed tension between these two ‘time zones’. This was a fight for control over time. That is to say, the time student participants scheduled for study and the time schedule set out in the unit and by the tutor. Because the participant students appreciated the flexibility of online study, they felt the tension of structuring their time around less flexible weekly timelines provided through the unit materials.
There existed, then, tension between two different types of lived time: forced synchronicity of the unit and asynchronicity needed to fit study into personal routines. It provided an interesting dilemma for students. They needed to modify their time and associated routines to match the synchronous weekly routine while acting within the asynchronous flexibility of negotiating work, study, family and social responsibilities. Put simply, in many cases the units were designed for weekly routines, but undertaken online in the context of many differing lived times. The various conflicts of lived time impacted student engagement. Perceived conflicts between lived times and external intrusions into them, led to students’ sense of loss of control and increased alienation and disengagement.