In the body of research investigating students’ attitudes towards interacting with other students in online and distance education courses, there are some studies that report overwhelmingly positive attitudes. For example, O’Reilly and Newton (2002) found the majority of their 90 survey respondents highly valued interaction with peers and reported a wide range of benefits including mutual support, friendships, a reduced sense of isolation and new insights into the concepts being studied. Yildiz and Chang (2003) similarly reported that most.
