Distance Education

Author(s):  
Wm. Benjamin Martz Jr. ◽  
Morgan Shepherd

Almost 3.5 million students were taking at least 1 online course during the fall 2006 term. The 9.7 % growth rate for online enrollments far exceeds the 1.5 % growth of the overall higher education student population. (Allen and Seaman, 2007) By 2006, the distance education industry was well beyond $33.6 billion (Merit Education, 2003). As with most markets, 1 of the keys to taking advantage of this growing market is customer satisfaction. Therefore the greater the student satisfaction in a distance program, the more likely that program will be successful. This paper identifies 5 key components of satisfaction for distance education programs through a student satisfaction questionnaire and factor analysis. A questionnaire was developed using these variables and administered to 341 distance students. The results revealed 5 constructs for student satisfaction in a distance education program (Martz and Reddy, 2005; Martz and Shepherd, 2007). Using these factors as guidance, this paper extends those findings to provide some operational and administrative implications.

Author(s):  
Evan T. Robinson

The intent of action is the achievement of something decisive. Within any business, decisiveness is hopefully linked to the successful generation of revenue due to the right product being introduced to the right market at the right time. The challenge is to ensure that once a product is released to the market, that the most revenue possible can be earned. In the case of higher education, one potential product is distance education offerings that provide learning opportunities to students who cannot participate in traditional education. The development of distance educational materials for online use, however, can be costly, and subsequent revenue streams may generates little or no revenue, which occurs with many distance education programs. This can be resolved, however, by the strategic re-purposing of online course materials that may have been developed for distance education.


Author(s):  
Iwona Miliszewska

Distance education is an increasingly common educational alternative, as well as a key contributor to the newly competitive landscape in higher education. Once regarded as an experimental alternative outside mainstream university education, distance education has attained new levels of legitimacy and expansion and has grown into a higher education industry of its own. This article discusses the history and transformation of distance education to create a framework for the sequence of events that have contributed to the distance education movements and shaped modern post-secondary distance education programs. The article outlines the evolution of post-secondary distance education from its inception to the present: its progression from informal programs offered by individual providers to a well-organised formal educational alternative; its purpose and characteristics; its expansion and internationalisation; and the various forces that have shaped its growth. While noting that technology has its limitations—it can facilitate teaching but not replace it—the article highlights the crucial role that advancements in technology have played in propelling the evolution of distance education, and points to the role of technology in blurring the conceptual divide between distance and traditional education.


Author(s):  
Serhat Koca ◽  
Birol Gulnar ◽  
Murat Aytas

Web-based distance education method (WBDE) is used by many private and public education institutions today. Through this educational application, instructors can deliver training content to students or participants from all over the world, synchronously and asynchronously. Within the scope of WBDE applications, trainings are carried out through websites with many different structures and interfaces. In this direction, in the process of conveying the said training method to the recipients, the way the education is provided in terms of instructional design and technical dimension becomes very important for the satisfaction of the recipients. In this context, the measurement of student satisfaction level regarding instructional design and technical dimension in web-based distance education programs has been studied on the example of Spiritual Guidance program. In this direction, it is thought that the study of distance education programs in terms of instructional design and technical dimension will contribute to the researches to be put forward in this direction.


Author(s):  
Ben Martz ◽  
Venkat Reddy

Distance education is playing an ever-growing role in the education industry. As such, it is prudent to explore and understand driving conditions that underlie this growth. Understanding these drivers and their corresponding concerns (Table 1) can help educators in the distance education field better prepare for the industry.


2011 ◽  
pp. 1965-1971
Author(s):  
Carol C. Dudding

This article describes the use of two-way videoconferencing for providing live clinical supervision of graduate students. It includes the rationale and description of a method of supervision as it has been implemented within a distance education program. The reader is provided with research findings and implications for policymaking within institutions of higher education and professional organizations overseeing the clinical training of future professionals.


Author(s):  
Evan T. Robinson

The intent of action is the achievement of something decisive. Within any business, decisiveness is hopefully linked to the successful generation of revenue due to the right product being introduced to the right market at the right time. The challenge is to ensure that once a product is released to the market, the most revenue possible can be earned. In the case of higher education, one potential product is online education offerings that provide learning opportunities to students who cannot participate in a traditional education. The development of digitized educational materials for online use, however, can be costly and subsequent revenue streams may generate little or no revenue, which has occurred in some instances for distance education programs.


Author(s):  
Jared Bucker

Distance education has to compete for scarce resources within an educational institution. Not only does a distance education program compete against more traditional forms of education; but, it also competes among countless options in the distance education field. In order to efficiently allocate these resources an educational institution must have an economic model with which to evaluate its distance education programs. This model must be able to assess all the costs and benefits of each program and investigate and identify factors which may yield empirical characteristics of financially successful programs, while conversely, avoiding any possible pitfalls. The development, analysis, and results of this proposed economic model could be used post hoc while modifying and proposing budgetary revisions. It is also hoped that this model can be used to continuously address fiscal solvency, while maintaining services and profitability.


Author(s):  
Engin Karadag ◽  
Ahmet Su ◽  
Hatice Ergin-Kocaturk

AbstractCOVID-19 pandemic triggered distance education in higher education. Decisions such as isolation, social distancing and quarantine made by countries unexpectedly and suddenly forced face-to-face education to change to distance education within days. All academics around the world had to move online overnight. All the educational and academic activities in higher education (courses, exams, meetings, etc.) had to be conducted online in a few days. Based on these changes, this study aimed to analyze the relationships among student, faculty (adaptations of faculty members to distance education) and institutional (distance learning capacities of the universities) variables that affected satisfaction of the students related to distance education in higher education institutions in Turkey during COVID-19 pandemic using hierarchical linear modeling (HLM). The study group included 14,962 students and 3631 academics from 30 universities. The results showed that universities with higher distance education capacities got higher satisfaction scores. HLM analysis showed that 43% of the variation in satisfaction scores resulted from universities. The second HLM analysis showed that 44% of the overall satisfaction score variance of the students could be explained by the factors of university features (Level 2: distance education capacity and acceptance and use of distance education systems of faculty members). Thus, it was determined that 44% of the university factor calculated as 43% in Model 1 (which is calculated within students’ general satisfaction scores) resulted from the distance education capacity and the acceptance and use of distance education systems of faculty members. The findings of this study provide insights to improve distance education by stakeholders of higher education institutions.


Author(s):  
Nguyen Huu Cuong ◽  
Le My Phong

Distance and online education are popular training modes in the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and open education. Accreditation is one of the approaches that many countries across the world have implemented to assure the quality of higher education, including distance learning programs. This study investigates the rationale and future directions for quality assurance and accreditation of distance education programs in Vietnam. First, the paper presents concepts of distance education, and quality assurance and accreditation of distance education. Second, the research reviews experiences of implementing quality assurance and accreditation for distance education from several countries in the world. Next, the paper analyses the rationale for conducting accreditation of distance education programs in our country. Finally, the study proposes three groups of recommendations for the national quality assurance organization, accreditation agencies and higher education institutions to be able to implement the quality assurance and accreditation of distance education in Vietnam successfully. Keywords Quality assurance; Accreditation; Distance education; Online learning; Higher education References [1] UNESCO, Distance education in Asia and the Pacific: country papers, Volume III (Singapore - Vietnam), 2009. www.unesco.org/education/pdf/53-23c.pdf.[2] UNESCO, Open and distance learning: trends, policy and strategy considerations, 2002. http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0012/001284/128463e.pdf.[3] Owusu-Boampong, A. & Holmberg, C., Distance education in European higher education – the potential, UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning, International Council for Open and Distance Education and Study Portals B.V, 2015.[4] Australian University, Distance learning Australia, 2018. http://www.australianuniversities.com.au/distance-learning/.[5] Darojat, O., Nilson, M. & Kaufman, D., Quality assurance in Asian open and distance learning: policies and implementation, Journal of Learning for Development, Vol. 2, No. 2 (2015) 1. [6] Jung, I. & Latchem, C., Quality assurance and accreditation in distance education and e-learning: models, policies and research, Routledge, London, 2012.[7] Wang, Qi., Quality assurance - best practices for assessing online programs, International Journal on Elearning, Vol. 5, No. 2 (2006) 265. [8] Friedman, J., 10 facts about accreditation in online degree programs, U.S.News & World Report, February 9, 2017. https://www.usnews.com.[9] U.S. Department of Education., Accrediting agencies recognized for distance education and correspondence education, 2018. https://www2.ed.gov. [10] The Australasian Council on Open, Distance and e-learning (ACODE), Benchmarks for technology enhanced learning, ACODE, Canberra, 2014.[11] Bollaert, L., NVAO’s accreditation of online education in a nutshell, 2015. https://www.nvao.net.[12] Henderikx, P. & Ubachs, G., Quality assurance and accreditation of online and distance higher education, 2017. https://www.unic.ac.cy.[13] Stella A. & Gnanam, A., Quality assurance in distance education: The challenges to be addressed, Higher Education, Vol. 47, No. 2 (2004) 143.[14] Malaysian Qualification Agency (MQA), Code of practices for open and distance learning, MQA, Kuala Lumpur, 2013.[15] COL, DEMP & UNESCO, Quality assurance toolkit for distance higher education institutions and programmes, COL, Vancouver, 2009.[16] Vietnamnet, Mở đào tạo từ xa sẽ không cần cấp phép, 2017. http://vietnamnet.vn. [17] Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA), Quality assurance of online learning: discussion paper, TEQSA, Melbourne, 2017. [18] Nhân dân Điện tử, Phát triển đào tạo từ xa đúng hướng, 2017. http://www.nhandan.com.vn.[19] Nguyễn Hữu Cương, Một số kết quả đạt được của kiểm định chất lượng giáo dục đại học Việt Nam và hướng triển khai trong tương lai, Tạp chí Quản lý giáo dục, Tập 9 Số 8 (2017) 7.[20] Cục QLCL - Bộ GD-ĐT, Danh sách các CSGD đại học; các trường cao đẳng, trung cấp sư phạm, đã hoàn thành báo cáo tự đánh giá, được kiểm định, 2018 (dữ liệu cập nhật đến ngày 31/8/2018).[21] Cục QLCL - Bộ GD-ĐT, Danh sách các chương trình đào tạo được đánh giá/công nhận, 2018 (dữ liệu cập nhật đến ngày 31/8/2018).


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