Using Frustration Awareness to Assist Counseling Students with Succeeding in their Online Curriculum

Daniel Kaufmann, Grand Canyon University                                                                          Terri Ferguson-Lucas, Grand Canyon University

Abstract

Online education alters the expectation for graduate-level engagement in relation to classroom engagement and student evaluation. Whereas the process of achieving a graduate degree in counseling has historically required learners engage in self-exploration, ethical and moral development, and reviewing contemporary research topics in counseling, online learners may experience a different process in their journey through completing task after task of counseling related coursework. It is also common for people in situations of expected personal growth to experience frustration when faced with their inability to overcome a given task upon exhausting a reasonable amount of effort per said task. Due to this task-based focus of many online counseling programs, student growth and the ensuing frustrations, along with avenues for alleviating such frustrations, may come from courses of triumph more commonly observed in other electronic media vastly different than would be expected in higher education experiences: the play of video games. This study explores the contrast between the experience of and response to frustration for students in online counselor education programs, traditional/classroom-based counselor education, and players of online video games to better understand student-consumer expectations for achieving success in adverse scenarios.

Keywords: frustration, instructor feedback, counselor development, online learning