Quality of distance education in comparison to mainstream higher education
Bernd J. Krämer
The misconception that distance education aims at the total abolishment of face-to-face classrooms is revived every now and then, especially when new technology promises to extricate the learning process from time and space constraints. The truth is that specialized distance education institutions were particularly established to serve students who are prevented from attending on-campus classes regularly because they are working professionals, have to satisfy family obligations, or suffer from other constraints. Distance education and on-campus education traditionally occupied the poles of a continuum spanned by the dimensions locality, time, control, and strategy.
While distance students are largely interacting with their teachers and peers remotely and asynchronously, control the pace of their learning process, and are basically free in their choice of a learning strategy, on-campus students have ample opportunities for face-to-face interaction but are also bound to predefined times of classroom lectures and lab sessions and the educational process is strongly directed by teachers and tutors. But with the advent of new media in higher education and a range of digital learning environments and platforms, software-based learning, communication and collaboration tools and services, the classical distinction between distance education and on-campus study gets blurred. Distance education evolves towards blended education including more face-to-face and synchronous study phases and more and more campus universities are changing into dual-mode universities including an ever increasing number of distance education elements into their educational processes.
A recurring debate in the context of distance education is concerned with the quality of distance education in comparison to mainstream education and the recognition of university degrees awarded by open and distance universities. One way to answer these questions is to refer to the growing number of distance teaching institutions and distance students. The argument here is that this would probably not happen if the educational model of open and distance university were doubtful. Another approach was taken by Kathleen Ellis in her PhD thesis entitled <”Satisfaction of Graduate Students with their Distance Learning Experience”> <
http://etd.lib.ttu.edu/theses/available/etd-04032008-134720/unrestricted/Ellis_Kathleen_Diss.pdf>. This research was inspired by a core claim in the Noel-Levitz <National Online Learners Priorities Report> <
https://www.noellevitz.com/NR/rdonlyres/8F7A812B-C791-452D-AFAC-54C536BBEB70/0/06ONLINE_report.pdf>: “Satisfaction with learning has been associated with student success”. A third attempt was made by the Leonardo project <IMPACT> <link to project website>, which performed a series of randomized controlled trials using questionnaires and statistical analyses as research instruments to find answers to these and other questions related to the impact of new media and ICT on distance learning students. Around 50% of the more than 360 respondents agreed that university degrees awarded by open universities compare to degrees from traditional campus universities. However, especially in the control group, which was composed of 180 students who had no distance learning experience, a great deal of uncertainty existed (more than 42%) about this question. In the intervention group, which just included people with distance study experiences, much less uncertainty can be observed about this thesis, while the level of agreement is about twice as high as in the control group. This results corresponds to Ellis’ finding that “experience in distance learning is a predictor of satisfaction with the constructs of instruction, membership, technology and course management”. With respect to the quality of learning outcomes at open universities as opposed to campus universities, our research found similar judgements as for the degree question . In both groups the level of uncertainty was high on this question.
