Helping Students To Persist in a Distance Education Program: The Role of the Teacher.

N

20

Academic Persistence; Adult Students; Distance Education; Foreign Countries; Higher Education; Nursing Education; Participant Satisfaction; Teacher Behavior; Teacher Characteristics; Teacher Influence; Teacher Role; Teaching Styles

Teachers can assume different roles in a distance education environment, but teachers should appreciate their importance in helping learners persist in a distance education activity. In order to discover what distance education students regarded as helpful teacher behaviors, a questionnaire was designed and mailed to 334 1993-94 graduates of the 10-month nursing management distance education program across Canada. The qualitative data were collected by two methods--a critical incident exercise and interviews--and analyzed through an inducted process and followed steps suggested by Van Kaam (1959) for analyzing written descriptions and Colaizzi (1978) for analyzing interview data. A total of 926 descriptions and explanations of the distance education experience were gleaned from 109 participants. The results of the study produced six general themes of teacher behavior that students regarded as important: teaching practices, evaluation practices, interpersonal relationships, personal characteristics, professional competence, and availability to students. Students contributed positive descriptions of how teacher behavior in each of these areas encouraged them to persist in their program. The study concluded that teachers may need to make more effort to engage in the behaviors the students regarded as helpful in order to encourage student persistence in the distance education programs. (Contains 19 references.) (KC)

1996

ED389855