A Duoethnographic Exploration of Persistent Technological Failures in Synchronous Online Education

Abstract

While higher education becomes increasingly reliant upon technology to deliver instruction, technological failures profoundly affect faculty members and students. We used duoethnography to explore the student-instructor dynamic during persistent technological failures within a synchronous online course, which occurred during a semester-long, qualitative research methods course. Duoethnography allowed us to first explore our own experiences and then engage in a continuous dialogue to interrogate the same event without privileging one voice over the other. We provide a series of dialogues of our shared understandings and different perspectives, taken from discussions and reflections on the experience. We then provide deeply personal insight into how faculty members and students may be affected by technological failures in distance education