Working With Distance Education

Introduction
This article is referring to Distance Education in general, although online would come into the same category.  For our courses we use textbooks (and cds if applicable) with assignments and exercises.  

In the 1990’s marketing consultant Faith Popcorn popularized the term “cocooning”.  She defines cocooning as “the need to protect oneself from the harsh, unpredictable realities of the outside world”.  

It is becoming increasingly manifest she says, in a number of ways:

• working from home
• skyrocketing VCR purchases and DVD rentals
• answering machines screening all our calls
• walking or exercising with earphones
• internet shopping

In their book on network marketing You can get rich … starting now! By Richard Baker and Dr Dale Gerke make the comment:  “If there’s one urgent business lesson marketers and retailer will have to learn … it will be to shift the focus away from traditional means of access to the consumer .. don’t expect the consumers to come to you anymore.  You’ll have to reach them in the cocoon itself”

Over the past four years we have had over 1200 (1247) students enroll though colleges into the courses.  In 2006 the enrolments were through twenty five ACE colleges.

2003 - 180
2004 - 339
2005 - 273
2006 - 455

The courses offered are from Certificate I, II and III in Business.  The most popular courses are Medical Reception and Advanced/Basic Medical Terminology.  A Medical Typing Course has just been introduced, which together with Advanced Medical Terminology and Medical Reception equate to Certificate III in Medical Administration.  Some of the colleges don’t have this on their scope, however explain the situation to the students and issue Statements of Attainment.

The completion rate is just over 60% (61.25) for fully complete courses. The figure would be higher if completed units rather than courses were taken into account.

Feedback from Students and Colleges

Students

A survey of students in 2007 produced the follow reasons for studying by distance.

Studying at their own time and pace were of the highest importance to the students.  Family and lifestyle commitments were important factors stopping the students attending face to face classes.  Distance and transport were other problems high on the list. 

It was interesting to note that quite a few of the respondents were in the 50-55 year age bracket, the average age being 40.  Two points were surprising – several mentioned the didn’t like being distracted by slower members in face to face classes and others mentioned they felt they had greater accessibility to the tutor.  Cost was a very minor point.

These results were very similar to a survey done in 2004

Colleges

The points listed below are feedback from some of the Adult and Community Education Colleges who are running distance courses.  The group from 2007 agreed with the information from 2004 and didn’t have anything extra to offer.

• Allows the college to provide accredited training without having to program it and hope it runs if they get enough participants.
• Assists the college to meet their student contact hours in accredited training
• Allows the college to provide more diverse options for their students cost-effectively
• Allows a greater range of courses to be offered
• Don’t have to cancel a class through lack of numbers  (one student and the course runs)
• Students (and income) spread more evenly over the year
• Frees up class rooms
• Allows the colleges to meet the student’s needs in a more immediate fashion

Benefits for the Tutor

With distance education it is often possible to work from home as a tutor and balance family and personal responsibilities.

• Work at own time and pace from home
• Use time more effectively (not tied up for hours traveling or conducting classes with just a few students)
• Not wondering if a class will be cancelled through lack of numbers
• More economically viable.  (Given a rate per student as opposed to an hourly rate per class).
• Students spread more evenly over the year

Potential Disadvantages for Tutor

• For own privacy consider having a mobile phone dedicated to the business – can turn off out of hours. Make it clear in the introductory letter what time to ring e.g. 10am – 8pm (to allow for odd hours)

• Tutor’s holidays. Perhaps take the enrolments but explain there will be a week or so when the tutor will be unavailable and there will be a delay in feedback.

Methods

• With distance education we have found a combination of sending out hard copies of instructions, assessments, and resources with the student emailing assignments and the tutor emailing feedback has proved very successful
• Students have been given the option of having the course on disc to upload to their computer, but very few have taken up the offer
• It is important to be very exact with wording of assessments. Make sure the meaning is very clear and not ambiguous
• Have to use very plain language, things easily misunderstood including tone of feedback
• In Customer Service the student chooses the product or service they are promoting (something they can relate to)
• We try tp have a maximum of 3-4 day turnaround with feedback – preferably 1-2 days
• We suggest 12 weeks for longer courses (8 weeks for shorter ones) and give at least the same in extensions (many students have sick parents)

Assessing

One issue with Distance Education is authenticity.

The student signs a declaration on the cover sheet stating that it is their own work.  The tutor definitely gets a feel for a student’s work, and can see if something changes.  Personally I have only had a couple of occasions that I had concerns about authenticity.  One was in a face to face course where two students submitted the same assignments, identical mistakes and all.  On the second occasion someone had obviously fixed up the word processing for a distance student (which wasn’t part of the performance criteria) - the assignment still had the same spelling mistakes.

Often Recognition of Prior Learning is the reason for doing distance courses, in the sense that many students are women returning the workforce after a long break and need ‘a piece of paper’  to show they can meet the performance criteria.  It is far easier for a student or candidate to enroll in a course, do the required assessment methods such as written tests and simulations than go to the trouble of ‘letters from thirds parties, matching performance criteria etc.’  Also it should be Recognition of Current Competencies and many are happy to do a refresher course. 

In general the assessments are a combination of a Formative Assessment and a Summative Assessment.

Formative Assessment
Formative assessment takes place over a period of learning or practice. It assists and supports the learner by advising them about the quality of their performance and their rate of progress towards the achievement of the performance criteria as stated in the competency standard.

Summative Assessment
Summative assessment occurs at the end of a period of learning or practice.  It determines where a unit of competency or performance criteria has been met for the purpose of formal recognition.

The forms of evidence are

Indirect Evidence: Projects, simulations, case studies and role-plays

Supplementary Evidence: Written and oral questioning

Administration

• Assignments increased when encouraged to send by email instead of mail
• Ask the students to put their, name, course and page number on each page of the assignment and especially their email address.  It is surprising (and frustrating) the people who have very unusual email addresses.
• Student’s signature on forms can be a problem if everything else is emailed.  Ask them to do the paperwork at the start of the course.
• With instructions to the student (study guides etc.) obviously fulfill regulatory requirements however don’t overwhelm the student with too many instructions – keep them simple and too a minimum
• Don’t print too far ahead with paperwork such as assessments – may want to slightly change wording
• We use a combination of post office prepaid bags and delivery service (such as Star Track)
• The majority of students have keyboarding and internet skills already so these courses haven’t included that in Distance education.

Conclusion

Quite a few students use a phrase which we believe sums it all up:

“Thank you for giving me the opportunity.”