How online learning helps level the playing field

Diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder a year ago, Stephen Zissermann is now studying a master’s degree in public health online at the University of Technology, Sydney. A school teacher and a public health worker, married with children, and aged 51, he says the degree appealed to him because it is 100 per cent online. “When I was at university on campus I’d get very distracted, very overwhelmed,” he says, remembering his earlier university degree courses.

ADHD, he points out, is famously poorly named and in reality is an executive function disorder, affecting the ability to plan, monitor and achieve goals.

“I’d lurch between feeling very lonely and feeling incredibly socially integrated,” Zissermann says. “I was overwhelmed and over-stimulated, so I would occasionally remove myself and metaphorically run away and hide and not attend lectures. That was the story of my undergrad, and the feelings persisted into my Master of Teaching as well, which I did when I was 30.”

The online UTS degree is taught via study modules in a learning management system, and although there are certain immovable deadlines for assignments and fixed tutorial dates, Zissermann has control over much of his study schedule. “I work through at my own pace,” he says. “It’s good.”

Damir Mitric, director of client and learner solutions for executive education, at Melbourne University’s business school, says online learning suits a diverse range of students including those with neurodiversity. The Master of Business Administration degree offered by the Melbourne Business School is fully online.

“If you’re wired differently, if you have ADHD, you may struggle with executive function, and in the traditional mode you’re always at a disadvantage,” Mitric says.

Online learning, he adds, can level the playing field, providing students with more time to reflect and consider their answers, and removing the anxiety inherent in face-to-face competition.

“We take a big chunk of the learning that’s normally done in real-time, so synchronously,” he says. “We break it into smaller chunks that a learner can do in their own time.

“A really well-designed online degree provides a lot of learner agency. So learners can choose how to learn and how to learn in such a way that serves their personal and their professional goals.”

For his part, Zissermann works an average of 4½ days a week teaching in kindergartens, as well as studying full-time, looking after his children and volunteering.

Although he is now taking medication for ADHD, he says “life-long habitual patterns of thinking” are not easily overcome. “The stimulants – you know, the jury’s out,” he adds. “They provide emotional regulation, so now I don’t have emotional peaks and troughs, but they don’t give me executive functioning skills.”

Like other universities, UTS provides a case worker or student success adviser for every student studying a course fully online. On his adviser’s recommendation, Zissermann registered his disability with the UTS accessibility service and he now has the option of a “no questions asked” extension for every assignment.

He says he usually overdoes research with a deep dive into an assigned topic. This “classic hyper-focus” he says, is time-consuming and an emotional drain, “so having the extension in my back pocket is liberating”.

The University of Melbourne’s business school also allocates every student studying an online degree a “student success adviser” – a point of contact for queries about all aspects of university life that are not purely academic.

A student success adviser at the Melbourne Business School, Evie Leigh has found online degrees are particularly suitable for neuro-diverse students – including students with ADHD, OCD or those on the autism spectrum.

“They have found that their anxiety is significantly reduced because they’re not in a classroom setting,” she says. “So they can study from where they’re comfortable. It also gives them time to think and be able to articulate properly. That’s always incredibly helpful.”

She offers these students extra support calls if they need them. “I’m able to tailor the advice and my support to their specific disabilities or circumstances,” she says.

All MBS online students are required to interact with their peers at some level, Leigh says, and most subjects include group projects with mandatory participation. In addition, an element of the MBA Online – “Contribution to Learning” – is a points-based system to encourage students to participate socially.

“We have a community forum dedicated to each subject – that’s where the student can interact with both the lecturers and the cohort of their fellow students,” Leigh says.

She has heard that students find the interaction on the platform as valuable as the content, and some say it lowers their anxiety levels because they realise “hey, we’re actually all in this together”.