Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the skill acquisition, course effectiveness, and community engagement of students enrolled in an on-campus and online basic counseling skills course. Two sections which were developed and taught by the researcher participated in this study.

Participants were undergraduates at the junior level or graduate students who were predominantly enrolled in helping professions majors, with the majority enrolled in the course as an elective. Fifteen participants who were enrolled in the online course voluntarily participated and seventeen participants enrolled in the on-campus course voluntarily participated in the study. The study participants completed two assessments online including the Student Instructional Report (SIR II) and the Distance Education Student Instructional Report (e-SIR II) to address course effectiveness. This study specifically addressed the areas on this assessment related to the instructor's communication and organization within the course, the student's view of faculty and student interaction, as well as a global item that assessed the students' opinion of the course's effectiveness. The second assessment was the Online Learning Community Survey (DiRamio, 2005) modified by the researcher that was used to assess learning community engagement in three areas, including the student's perception of the instructor's role within the community, their connections to peers and instructor in the course, and their own levels of responsibility with the course. Additionally, five counseling interview transcripts from each section were randomly chosen to be rated by independent raters for skills acquisition using the Counseling Interview Rating Form (Russell-Chapin & Sherman, 2000). The study findings indicated no significant difference in participant's performance on the counseling interviewing transcripts between students enrolled in either course format. However, significant differences were found in the communication portion of the SIR II and e-SIR II assessments with the participants enrolled in the online course reporting lower communication scores than the participants enrolled in the oncampus course. Additionally, significant differences were found among the scores for student responsibility within the Community Survey with the participants in the online course reporting higher levels of responsibility for the course than the participants enrolled in the on-campus course.