Cyberpsychology: Psychological Processes That May Affect Dropout

Rates among Online IT Security Students

Tom Drange

1,2

and Joakim Kargaard

Noroff University College, Elvegt 2a, 4608 Kristiansand, Norway

University of Sunderland, Faculty of Computing, Engineering and Technology,

David Goldman Building, St Peters Campus, Norway

Noroff Education, Elvegt 2a, 4608 Kristiansand, Norway

Keywords: Online Education, Cyberpsychology, Social Anxiety, Drop out Rate.

Abstract “Peter” is an online student in an IT Security program, and since the educational institution offers it online

and he is a shy person, he thought that he would feel more comfortable at home, not having to face a lot of

new people. As the number of online studies increases so does the dropout rate among these students. Research

has shown that about 85% of people suffering from social anxiety have difficulties maintaining relationships

as well as coping with academic challenges. Social anxiety could be the main contributor for young people to

select studying online rather than in a physical classroom and therefore there may be a strong correlation

between academic difficulties, social anxiety and the dropout rate for online students. This paper aims to

enlighten educational institutions and staff that offers online study programs, by following "Peter" and his

challenges, and at the same time discuss the different psychological processes he goes through and try to relate

these to the rising dropout rate in higher online education. "Peter" is, of course, a fictive character, but with

challenges, the authors experience from students on a frequent basis. The authors base the discussion on own

experience and recent research.

1 INTRODUCTION

Peter is staring at the screen. He does not get it. He

is trying to configure a router but does not seem to

get his head around the subnetting of IP addresses,

and he keeps getting an error message from the

console. He has asked for help via the chat channel

used by students in his class, and the last message

there is shining brightly at him…” Don’t you

understand?" No. He does not understand. He feels

stupid. Maybe this was not such a good idea after all.

Maybe this study program is too complicated. Maybe

he is just not cut out for it.

10-15% of us will during a lifetime experience social

anxiety according to NHI.no (nhi.no, 2013) and after

a student survey revealed a 49% completion rate from

our online study programs (Figure 1) the authors

conducted a short survey of online students

undertaking a Network and IT-security program the

academic year 2016-2017. The survey (Figure 2)

showed that 17.6 percent of our online students lists

psychological difficulties as one of the top reasons for

Figure 1: 49% completion rate in online studies.

choosing online studies over traditional classroom-

based study programs (Drange and Kargaard, 2017).

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the

different settings an online student might find him or

herself in and the psychological processes that could

result in the student dropping out. We will follow

“Peter”, a fictive student, through different scenarios

and reflect on what in those scenarios could have an

impact on the student's decision to either stay on the

program or quit.

252

Drange, T. and Kargaard, J.

Cyberpsychology: Psychological Processes That May Affect Dropout Rates among Online IT Security Students.

DOI: 10.5220/0006776502520257

In Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU 2018), pages 252-257

ISBN: 978-989-758-291-2

2 PERCIEVED WORKLOAD

Peter is struggling with social anxiety and has often

chosen solutions based on that. So, when choosing his

educational path, choosing the "easy way out" felt

natural to him. Online studies seemed more

comfortable since he would not have to face any

fellow students, and he could avoid situations where

he usually would feel anxious.

However, Peter did not consider the Cognitive

load theory, that indicates that if an individual

exceeds the working memory capacity of during

learning, then the actual learning is inhibited (de Jong,

2010). De Jong (2010) also separates cognitive load

into three main categories; intrinsic cognitive load

that refers to taught topics, extraneous cognitive load

that relates to how one presents a topic and germane

cognitive load which is the learner's way of

constructing the knowledge. Some criticise the

cognitive load theory for conceptual limitations, such

as cognitive resources spent versus maximum

cognitive capacity and the fact that the level of

difficulty will affect student motivation and therefore

also the number of cognitive resources invested in the

learning activities (Moreno, 2009). Regardless this

will, of course, have an impact on the perceived

workload by the student. The learning environment

itself will often be new to students who will then have

to spend time getting accustomed to this new

environment. When fellow students are unfamiliar,

and their behaviour is foreign to us, as the situation

typically is during the start of a new class, then we

often struggle with getting a reasoned impression

(Suler, 2016) and this will also add to the perceived

workload. Because of these elements, a high level of

self-directed learning is needed to be successful in

online education. Great flexibilities both regarding

schedules and formal synchronous support and

guidance from instructors and teachers also call for

this. Self-directed learning is "a process in which

individuals take the initiative, with or without the help

from others” (Song and Bonk, 2016). According to

Candy (1991), one can divide self-directed learning

into four dimensions; self-direction as a personal

attribute; as the motivation to conduct own education;

as the willingness to organise instruction in formal

settings and the individual pursuit of learning

opportunities. Self-directed learning is more common

amongst adult learners than young students. The

reason for that may be related to the fact that adults

see the world differently from younger learners and

realise that to stay ahead in a career, they need to

engage in self-directed learning (Ruvinsky, 1986).

Figure 2: 17.6% list psychological difficulties as one of top

four reasons for choosing online studies.

3 CYBERPSYCHOLOGY

Peter is communicating online with his peers and his

tutors and teachers. He is mainly using text,

communicating through forums and direct

messaging. He put out an alternative solution on the

forum related to an activity published by the teacher

to get some responses from his fellow online students,

but he is getting less than helpful feedback. Some of

them are even indicating that he is stupid.

Dissociative anonymity provides people with the

perception that they can be rude and disrespectful

without anyone knowing who he or she is (Aiken,

2016) (Suler, 2016). If the educational institution is

making use of text-based communication systems

with no requirement of real usernames or identity

indicators, then the dissociative anonymity might

cause students to be blunt in their ways of

communicating. People who have chosen the online

environment to avoid having to face other students

might have a lower threshold for feeling hurt and

might, therefore, be offended more severe and quick

compared to what perhaps would be considered

normal among students in a brick and mortar

university environment.

Another situation we often experience online is

when we do something, such as clicking a button,

sending an e-mail or a message and expect something

to happen or receiving a response. If nothing happens

by clicking the button, or one receives no response by

sending an e-mail or a message through any of the

overwhelming numbers of communication tools

available, we experience what Suler (2016) calls a

"black hole". The website http://truecenter

publishing.com/psycyber/blackhole.html illustrates

this feeling perfectly, providing visitors entering the

Cyberpsychology: Psychological Processes That May Affect Dropout Rates among Online IT Security Students

253

site with a black wall of nothing. The visitor then have

to scroll a bit to find the actual text - but the first

seconds after entering this website, one experiences

that feeling of uncertainty "did I enter the correct

URL?”, “is my browser malfunctioning?”, “is

someone playing a joke on me?”.

Transference is when earlier experiences have

formed internal templates of what is normal feelings

and reactions in different situations, and these

templates affect how we unconsciously experience

other people (Suler, 2016). Transference could along

with black hole experiences, the feeling one

experiences when one expects feedback and do not

get it, create unfair and inappropriate reactions

towards fellow students in a text-based chat.

In this environment that is new to Peter, he has

made an effort to create a profile to reflect the person

that he would like to be. A sort of better version of

himself. "Why are they implying that I am stupid?

Why do they not like me? My profile picture is cool,

and I look good on it" he thinks to himself. "I even

wrote that I work out on a regular basis and that I

enjoy travelling, food and wine".

As we all do at some point or another, Peter

thought that his "best version" of himself would be

appreciated. We all do this in a more or less

conscious way on social media – adding the profile

picture we are most proud of, enhancing the interests

and hobbies we think make us look more exciting and

so on. However, what if our best self is not good

enough? If our perfect self, does not get any likes,

what then about our real self?

When humans communicate in real-life, we use

visual cues to guide us along the communicative path.

If the receiving party wrinkles his/her nose, we might

think that the line of arguments is not appreciated, and

therefore steer the conversation in other directions.

We might even think before we speak, and restrain

ourselves from saying things that we expect will

create an adverse reaction. This inhibition is often not

present in online communications, and the restraints

one usually feels becomes blurry, and one might

express things that one would not do in a face to face

conversation. This situation is called the online

disinhibition effect (Aiken, 2016)

The normalisation effect happens when we see or

hear things on many enough occasions to make it

seem reasonable. Our brain builds a model based on

experiences and associations that connect actions and

incidents and forms an idea of what is normal and

expected. Kahneman (2013) states that surprise

comes in two states; when an actively expected event

does not occur, or when something happens that one

does not expect. However, if something unexpected

occurs several times, one ceases to be surprised. For

instance, if one suddenly and without warning hear an

explosion, that will probably seem surprising because

one does not expect it and one will, therefore,

categorise it as "not normal". If then, a couple of

minutes after, another explosion goes off, one will not

be as surprised as with the first explosion. This

situation has now become something that is

considered normal under some circumstances but not

probable enough to actively expect it to happen

(Kahneman, 2013). For participants in a forum or an

online learning environment, the normalisation effect

can occur when people often use abusive and

offensive expressions, and along with the online

escalation effect described by Aiken (2016), the

feedback can get more and more ugly, discouraging

anyone from posting anything in a learning forum.

Because Peter is a timid person, he rarely speaks

to other people, at least not in person. He has a lot on

his mind, and sometimes, to take the load of things, he

posts his innermost thoughts on an anonymous forum

outside the school's learning environment. Feeling

alone with his experiences, he reveals that someone

abused him as a little boy.

Sometimes, the dissociation effect and the

disinhibition effect causes people to act contradictory

online, not revealing personal details such as name,

address and date of birth but do reveal very intimate

information about thoughts and actions, such as

adultery or experiences of child molesting. Even if

one confesses such things in anonymous forums and

as such make one feel protected, they are still shared

with strangers, investing in their opinion. The

stranger(s) might then respond, and the anonymity

provided by an anonymous user account will not

shield the confessor from the feelings negative

responses triggers (Turkle, 2012).

Suler (2017) identifies eight dimensions of

cyberpsychology; Identity, Social, Interactive, Text,

Sensory, Temporal, Reality and Physical. The

Identity dimension is the dimension from which the

rest feed (Suler, 2017). This dimension is the sense of

self and allows people to determine who they are or

are not within the cyber world. As users of

cyberspace, it is possible to create identities which

can be different depending on the application in use

at a specific time. This possibility allows people to

interact in a way very different from how people

would interact in the physical world. If one uses the

eight dimensions of cyberpsychology as a framework,

it is possible to identify different online habitats, and

each of these habitats provides a unique

psychological experience (Suler, 2017).

CSEDU 2018 - 10th International Conference on Computer Supported Education

254

Peter is panicking. His teacher just posted the

assignment for the term paper, and it involves a

presentation! Peter feels lost…”I can certainly do the

poster requirement, and the justification paper...but

presenting in front of the other students, even if it is

not in person but through video conferencing? That

is never going to happen. I need to address this with

my teacher, and if I cannot do it in another way, I will

quit!"

4 SOCIAL ANXIETY DISORDER

Social anxiety causes mild sufferers to experience

social apprehension, and in more severe cases

sufferers experience complete fear and avoidance

(Russell and Topham, 2012). A common mental

health problem, social anxiety, has been shown to

affect social relationships and academic problems.

Research indicates that 85% of people suffering from

social anxiety have problems with academics

(Villiers, 2009). In a study in 2004, Wetterberg

(2004) found that 21% of seventeen-year-old school

students in Sweden reported that social anxiety

caused study problems. The Liebowitz Social

Anxiety Scale (LSAS) is a tool that is very commonly

used to measure social anxiety. The scale measures

fear, and avoidance and the score indicate the level of

social anxiety. One measures this by using twenty-

four questions based on social situations, each

measuring fear or avoidance, on a scale of 0-3. There

is a total of 48 questions (Beard et al., 2011). The

maximum score available is 144. Total scores

between 60 and 90 indicate respondent is very

probably suffering from Social Anxiety Disorder and

scores above 90 indicate that respondents have a high

probability of suffering from Social Anxiety

Disorder. Using Google Forms, a survey was set up

based on the LSAS social questions, for Noroff

Vocational School students that started the academic

year for the first time in August 2017 as well as for

Noroff University College students. The survey

included an option to indicate if the student was an

on-campus student or an online student. The survey

was anonymous, and therefore the assumption was

that responses were honest. Based on research, people

scoring high on the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale

would be more likely to be online students, as they

would want to avoid social situations with other

students. This social anxiety could also affect dropout

rates amongst online students as they would be more

likely to give up when they perceive something as too

demanding.

Figure 3: LSAS score for online and on-campus.

The study showed that the median score for the

sample of 112 students was 44. This result indicates

that 50% of the respondents are below that value and

therefore are unlikely to suffer from Social Anxiety

Disorder. However, 50% of the students might suffer

from some level of Social Anxiety. Figure 3 shows

that the respondent who scored the highest total, 118,

is an online student.

Table 1 indicates that the number of respondents

who scored within the various scale ranges. The

scores show that many of the online students scored

below 70, indicating that not all online students have

a social anxiety disorder. Overall, the number of

campus students scoring below 70 on the LSAS test

was higher than the number above 70. As per Table

2, nine campus students scored 70 or more in the

LSAS test versus twelve online students. The results

do indicate that more online students suffer from

Table 1: The table shows the number of students, both

Online and Campus, who scored within each value of the

scale, from 10 to 130.

Scale

Below

Scale

Online

Above

Scale

Online

Below

Scale

Campus

Above

Scale

Campus

10 7

20 13

30 24

40 39

50 54

60 62

70 70

80 77

90 79

100 79

110 79

120 80

130 80

Cyberpsychology: Psychological Processes That May Affect Dropout Rates among Online IT Security Students

255

social anxiety. More online students than campus

students took the test, hence the higher number of

online students scoring below 70 versus the number

of campus students. Although the percentage values

indicate that 7.09% (Table 3) of the campus students

survey suffer from social anxiety, compared to 9.45%

of the surveyed online students, the sample size was

not large enough to offer conclusive results.

Table 2: The table shows the number of students who

scored above and below 70 in the LSAS test.

Campus (above and

below 70)

Online (above and

below 70)

9 12

39 68

Table 3: This table displays the percentage of Campus

versus Online students scoring above and below 70 in the

LSAS test.

% of Campus students

above and below 70

% of Online students

above and below 70

7.09% 9.45%

30.71% 53.54%

5 ISSUES

Grieve et al. (2017) set out to bridge the gap in the

literature regarding the relationship between

individual personality differences such as social

anxiety and extraversion, and how these students

perceive face-to-face and online learning activities.

The result in this research shows no significant

difference in how students with social anxiety and

high level of extraversion perceive online learning

activities. These findings contradict the indications

from our study. The reason for this may be because

the research was carried out on students that have

already overcome their social anxiety enough to

attend a traditional brick and mortar university. The

authors also aimed to include those individuals that

actively choose online studies to avoid situations that

trigger their fear and social anxiety, since experience

from a decade of online teaching indicates that the

attitudes these students have towards face-to-face

practical activities and online learning activities differ

very much from existing research. As mentioned, the

sample group was not large enough to present any

conclusive results beyond the indications. According

to Bandelow and Michaelis (2015) it is easier for

people with panic attacks to acknowledge their

challenges, as the perception is that these attacks are

more physical disorders than a psychological one.

Psychological disorders, although frequently

admitted by celebrities in the media these days, are

still by many young adults considered a sign of

failure. In anonymous, non-psychologist/psychiatrist

lead surveys like the LSAS test published on our

course pages, one would therefore still have

responders refusing to acknowledge their challenges

and therefore minimising their fear and avoidance

levels. The test questions were also in English, while

the responders are Norwegian, so language issues

might also affect the outcome of the test.

6 CONCLUSIONS

Peter is typing frantically...he is communicating with

his teacher through chat, regarding the poster

presentation. "I really cannot do this...this was the

very reason I quit my last college...is there any other

way to do this?"

His teacher is understanding and grants him the

privilege to present his poster in a one-to-one session

through Skype. "Thank you so much; I appreciate

this!" Peter is starting to calm down. He has managed

to avoid another situation where his fear of making a

fool out of himself would be overwhelming.

Social Anxiety Disorder affects many people. It

impacts how sufferers interact with the world around

them. The wave of new technological innovations has

made it possible for severe sufferers to remain at

home rather than needing to venture out. The advent

of online education has undoubtedly aided sufferers

in getting access to quality education without having

to leave their homes, and educational institutions and

personnel must bear this in mind. However, even if

more caring and understanding is an essential tool, is

it the right thing in every circumstance? What about

Peter? He has an understanding teacher that grants

him special privileges due to his condition, after all,

we all want our students to succeed. However, what

then when Peter has completed his degree and is

going to apply for a job? He will be called into

interviews and will have to "sell" himself as a

knowledge worker that will fit into the social structure

of a potential workplace. Will Peter manage this, after

being granted ways around this all his life?

Although the results of the survey were not

conclusive, there is indeed scope for more research.

The indications are that people with social anxiety

issues elect to study online rather than on-campus.

With a larger sample size, it is probable that the

CSEDU 2018 - 10th International Conference on Computer Supported Education

256

results would indicate more conclusively that online

studies are the choice for more people with these

challenges. This increase of students with social

anxiety in online study programs then would affect

the dropout rate as they would be more inclined

towards the point of least resistance.

7 FUTURE RESEARCH

As this research is ongoing as a part of a PhD

program, the next step will be to do a control test with

another tool to measure the level of social anxiety

within the same cohort of students. This test will then

be compared to the previous test to see if there are

correlations between them. The authors will then

interview a volunteered selection of both campus-

based and online based students with known social

anxiety issues. Finally, the authors will create a new

survey based on the interviews, to further support or

refute the theory that students with social anxiety will,

in fact, prefer online study programs over traditional

brick and mortar educational programs - when given

a choice.

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