How do Mature Students Returning to University Via Online Learning Experience the use of Time?

Abstract

Motivated by goals ranging from self-actualisation to career development, mature students (i.e. aged 21 or older) are confronted with an array of varying pressures and challenges during their return to university, many of which stem from time and the perception of its waning abundance. Whereas young undergraduate students may be more accustomed to pre-set schedules as they have freshly transitioned from school to university, mature students returning to university in the online environment are accompanied by additional of demands on their time, including work and family. As maturity and adult responsibilities are found to magnify temporal pressures, mature students’ experience of time in education may be distinctly different from that of the younger students. With a dearth of research addressing the experience of time and temporal attitudes in mature students, understanding the challenges encountered by these students may contribute positively to finding new modes of time management. Several directions for further research are discussed and implications of how mature students returning to university are affected by their use of time are outlined.