I went on a visit to a university that is delivering online courses this week, to talk to them about how they manage online and distance learning. They are situated outside the US, but they have some clients from the US who have studied their rather specialised courses. We talked about how they supported their clients, and whether distance made any difference.
They say that as far as they are concerned, for most single subject online courses, distance is no problem. They rely entirely on online and telephone communications for some subjects, and therefore as long as any time differences are factored into specific communications, it does not matter at all where the student and the tutor is. They also said that some 97% of communication is by email, where there is no geographical barrier to communication.
However, there are some online degrees and other higher courses that they will not offer outside a certain geographical area because there is a need to arrange campus visits. In some cases, they have reciprocal agreements with other organisations that can offer the facilities and even the tutoring needed for these on-site tutorials, but in some cases they feel that this is inappropriate, so they will only offer these courses to students who have access to the facilities they need.
# posted by Mary @ 2:25 PM
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