istance-Mediated Christian Higher Education: Student Perceptions of the Facilitative Nature of Selected Instructional Development Factors

• Main Author: Nill, John G.
• Other Authors: Lumsden, D. Barry
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: University of North Texas 2001
• Subjects: Distance education > Evaluation.; Correspondence schools and courses > Evaluation.; Global University.; distance education; Global University; Christian higher education
• Online Access: https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc2784/

A national survey was conducted to assess student perceptions of the helpfulness of specific instructional development factors in a distance education print-based program. Participants were all students who had successfully completed at least one distance education correspondence course with Global University or were currently enrolled in their first course. Instructional development factors studied included lesson openers, lesson outlines, lesson artwork, written objectives, amount of information presented before a study question is asked, typographical features, graphic art, study questions, answers to study questions, self tests, and unit progress evaluations. Basic demographic information was collected and survey respondents located their perceptions of instructional development factor helpfulness both on a Likert scale and on a rank-order scale. Respondents also were asked for comments on the instructional development factors studied. Differences among respondent groups were examined. Major findings include a tiered ranking by all groups showing formative evaluation factors to be the most helpful, content organization and presentation factors next most helpful, and visual enhancement features (graphic art, typographical design) the least helpful. Overall, perceptions of the facilitative nature of the instructional development factors were similar among most groups. Older students seem to focus more on organization while younger students exhibit a balance between their perceptions of the facilitative nature of content and testing. Students enrolled in their first course perceive several of the formative evaluation factors to be less helpful than do more experienced students while at the same time perceiving content pacing to be more helpful than do more experienced students.