Distance Education Students' "Metaphors"

Overview & Synopsis

Metaphors have an important place in education. In order to arrange curriculums more efficiently, one has to be aware of metaphors in those subjects. Students' have several metaphors about distance education, where most of them have no relevance with the exact meaning of the distance education. In order to reveal the common misconceptions and in order to be aware of students' metaphors; a research study with 12 distance education students was carried out. "Ocean" was the most common metaphor for distance education and blended distance education was taken as "an education for girls and boys". This research study is the first steps of a more detailed future project of the authors. 7 key questions are also presented, as recommendations for further researches.