“It’s really kind of easy for lecturers to communicate with you”: A qualitative investigation into higher education students’ perceptions of disclosing online to staff

Student-staff communication can shape the university experience for students, particularly in relation to attainment and engagement. Little is currently known about student-staff online communication or what may motivate students’ online self-disclosure behaviour (revealing information about the self via online educational platforms). Within this study, we qualitatively explore HE students’ (specifically emerging adults aged 18-24 years) perceptions of self-disclosing via online educational platforms. With a sample of ten university students (M= 20.09 years, SD= 1.00), we conducted one-to-one semi-structured interviews segmented into three parts: 1) goal orientation, 2) elicitation, 3) free recall. Our findings highlight that students’ expectations are shaped by miscommunication, speed of response and universal knowledge. Students’ expectations contextualise their views of appropriateness regarding personability, formality and urgency. These findings provide insight into how students perceive their online self-disclosure to staff, which aids our understanding of their motivations. Our novel study presents findings that can be utilised by HE staff and policymakers to support effective student-staff online communication. In turn, this may benefit the student experience.