Accessibility and Interactivity in Distance Education Programs for Health Professions
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This article reports a two-year study of students’ experiences of accessibility and interactivity in distance education programs for health professions. Through surveys and focus groups with students, instructors, and administrative staff, we found that accessibility and interactivity are interconnected and are important determinants of students’ success in distance education programs for health professions. Women with full-time employment in urban areas who were studying part time—many as single parents—constituted most students in the five health professions studied: disability management, health services administration, nursing, occupational therapy, and social work. Undergraduate and graduate education courses were offered primarily through WebCT. Highlights of students’ experiences were that instructors are a useful resource; accessibility requires students’ confidence and technical skills, particularly in on-line library searches; and opportunities for required and voluntary interactivity reduce the loneliness and loss of community experienced in distance education. Research findings have both administrative and academic implications for improving distance education programs for health professions. Cet article rend compte d’une recherche de deux ans sur les expériences des étudiants avec l’accessibilité et l’interactivité dans des programmes de formation à distance pour des professions dans le domaine de la santé. Par le biais d’enquêtes et de groupes de discussion (focus group) avec des étudiants, des professeurs et du personnel administratif, nous avons trouvé que l’accessibilité et l’interactivité sont interconnectées et sont des facteurs importants du succès des étudiants dans des programmes de formation à distance pour des professionnels de la santé. Des femmes travaillant à temps plein dans des régions urbaines et qui étudiaient à temps partiel - plusieurs d’entre elles en tant que mères célibataires – constituaient la plupart des étudiants dans les cinq professions de la santé étudiées : la gestion de services aux personnes handicapées, l’administration des services de santé, la profession d’infirmière, la santé au travail et le travail social. Les cours de premier cycle et de cycles supérieurs étaient offerts principalement par le biais de WebCT. Les points les plus marquants des expériences des étudiants étaient : les profes- seurs sont une ressource utile; l’accessibilité nécessite la confiance des étudiants et des habiletés techniques, particulièrement dans les recherches en ligne en biblio- thèque; et finalement les occasions d’interactivité exigée et volontaire réduisent la solitude et le manque d’un sentiment de communauté qui sont éprouvés en forma- tion à distance. Les résultats de la recherche ont des implications à la fois adminis- tratives et pédagogiques pour l’amélioration des programmes de formation à distance pour des professions dans le domaine de la santé.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.008 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".