Changes in the Demographics and Motivations of Distance Education in Students.
Bibliographic record
Abstract
University distance education students are typically presented as adults, studying part-time, often at a geographic distance from the campus. Evidence suggests, however, that the demographics of distance learners are changing. This study investigated the nature and magnitude of such changes at a Western Canadian university and the reasons why historically atypical students are enrolling in distance education. Demographic shifts were investigated using enrolment data from the past decade. Results indicate that the independent study population has shifted toward younger students, local residence, and full-time course loads that combine independent study with on-campus courses. These shifts indicate a convergence in characteristics of the independent study and on-campus populations, a trend that also appears to be shared by other western Canadian universities. A survey instrument based on a conceptual model of pushes (responses to barriers) and pulls (attractions of independent study) was developed to investigate the reasons why historically atypical students enrol in independent study. Results suggest that the most important barrier pushing students toward registration in independent study is work commitments; the most important attractions relate to control of the time, place, and pace of learning. Factor analysis of the reasons supports the validity of the barriers-attractions model. Institutional and programmatic implications include needed changes to instructional design, student support services, and policies regarding teaching resources and tuition fee distribution. Implications for the field of distance education include a challenge to the assumptions that distance education students are largely part-time adult learners, and employment is a barrier to study only for adult students. On presente generalement les etudiants universitaires a distance comme des adultes qui etudient a temps partiel, souvent loin du campus. En realite, cependant, les facteurs demographiques qui caracterisent les apprenants a distance changent. La presente etude s'est penchee sur la nature et sur l'ampleur de ces changements dans une universite de l'Ouest du Canada et sur les raisons motivant des etudiants traditionnellement atypiques a s'inscrire a des cours a distance. Les facteurs demographiques ont donc ete analyses a partir des donnees sur les inscriptions au cours de la derniere decennie. Selon les resultats, les apprenants autonomes sont maintenant de plus en plus jeunes, resident sur place et suivent des cours a temps complet a la fois de facon independante et aussi a l'univesite. Cette evolution temoigne d'une convergence des caracteristiques des apprenants autonomes et des etudiants sur le campus, qui semble se manifester egalement dans d'autres universites de l'Ouest du Canada. On a concu un instrument de sondage fonde sur le concept de « pression » (face aux barrieres) et « d'attrait » (pour l'etude independante), afin d'etudier les raisons pour lesquelles des etudiants autonomes atypiques s'inscrivaient a de tels programmes d'etudes. Les resultats obtenus montrent que d'une part, le travail est la principale pression exercee sur les etudiants, en faveur des etudes independantes. D'autre part, le principal attrait est la possibilite de gerer son temps et son rythme d'apprentissage. L'analyse de ces facteurs confirme la validite du modele inspire du concept de « pression et d'attrait ». Entre autres consequences pour les etablissements et les programmes, mentionnons la necessite de modifier la conception pedagogique, les services de soutien aux etudiants et les politiques en matiere de ressources d'enseignement et de repartition des droits de scolarite. Dans le domaine de l'education a distance, il faudra revoir les hypotheses selon lesquelles les etudiants a distance sont en grande partie des apprenants adultes a temps partiel, et l'emploi, une pression que vivent uniquement les etudiants adultes.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 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 teacher head, 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".