Navigating students’ experiences in asynchronous online learning modality

The Philippine education system requires higher education students to enroll six units of National Service Training Program (NSTP) course as mandated by the Republic Act 9163. Specifically, the NSTP 2 course serves as the culmination where students have to immerse themselves in the community. However, the pandemic situation in the country resulted in temporary closures of schools, thus, higher education institutions resorted to other means of teaching and learning delivery, such as asynchronous online learning modality. This study, therefore, aims to deeply understand the lived experiences of ten selected NSTP 2 students in an asynchronous online learning approach.

A qualitative research method, particularly a phenomenological research design, was utilized by the researcher to interview ten purposively selected NSTP 2 students. Guided by the semi-structured interview questionnaires, three themes were revealed in this study: learning autonomously, reflective learning engagement, and feeling of helplessness and alone. Interestingly, the findings highlighted that learning the NSTP course in an asynchronous online learning modality developed their sense of responsibility and reflective thinking skills as the participants learned the process of navigating the pace of their learning. Meanwhile, there were also cases of a feeling of loneliness or isolation since there was limited to poor facilitator-student and student-student interactions.

This study is a good attempt to understand the learning journey of selected NSTP 2 students under the asynchronous online learning modality. Nevertheless, this will provide institutional policymakers to revisit the course, hence, ensuring to maintain the positive feedback from the students and addressing the areas that need to be improved.