In this paper we will analyse and discuss students views upon learning online and why it is hard to create engaging study discussions online. Many studies, all over the world, has shown that engaging students in 'learning conversations' in net based courses is a critical issue - it is easier said then done to create a digital study environment with participating and engaged students. For more than three years data has been gathered and analysed within three research projects in the Department of Education at Umeå University in Sweden with focus on Internet-based adult education courses and study circles. Common to all projects has been a meeting, in the arena of distance education, of the traditions of liberal adult education - folkbildning in Swedish - and more recent developments in information and communication technology. A distinctive feature of the pedagogy of folkbildning has been the emphasis placed on discussion, group meetings and dialogue as a means of developing, collectively, participants' knowledge and competence. In the main study nearly 4000 net conference postings from eight different courses were collected and coded in order to examine how conversation, dialogue and student influence took shape. To these data, interviews with 18 participants in six courses were added. In another study information was gathered by a questionnaire completed by 235 participants and 21 course leaders across 32 courses. The result showed - even though the folkbildning ideology strongly promote a socio-cultural approach to learning with an emphasis on participating out of free will, collaborative learning and strong student influence in all aspects of the course - that many students hardly ever used their right to influence the course and rarely participated by writing in the course conferences. In one of the other studies, in which 17 courses and study circles were evaluated, a questionnaire was completed by 104 participants - eight participants were also interviewed - about their experiences of participating in an online study group. The results were similar to the larger study, as it showed that although the main principle for the participation was based on the students free will and own motivation; there was a wide range between students who were frequent and active participants and students who barley participated at all. How can these results be explained? In this paper we are focusing on interview data from the projects described above. In order to try to understand why the interest in taking part in these learning conversations is often low, we will analyse how participants in courses and study circles reason about motivation and ups and downs of taking courses online. What can we learn about the barriers a study organizer of courses online has to overcome in order to truly engage the participants in "leaning conversations"? How are the barriers constructed, and what can be done to overcome them? Preliminary results from the interviews indicates that: 1) the participants own view upon knowledge and learning might differ from the socio-cultural perspective the courses were built on. According to some of the students, their very reason for participating in the online course was the fact that they neither had time nor interest in taking part in studies which included time consuming discussions and social interactions with others. Their expectations for the course were to get instructions and a set of tasks to be completed through self-studies. Their aim was to learn "something useful" and measurable. 2) Even advanced computer uses might lack experiences of text based communication in a dialogic sense, which leaves them out of means for transmitting the true meaning behind their words. 3) Many of the students had experienced that motivation isn't always enough to become an active and engaged participant in a net course, it takes a great amount of self-discipline as well!