Focus on Distance Education.

Overview & Synopsis

As a followup to a survey of distance education faculty, the National Education Association conducted two 3-hour focus groups with 12 higher education faculty members in June 2000. The purpose of the groups was to gain more understanding of the complexity of feelings and opinions expressed in a telephone survey conducted in March 2000. The telephone survey indicated that 72% of distance learning faculty had a positive opinion of distance learning, compared to 14% who had a negative opinion. In the focus groups, as in the survey, increasing a student's access to education was the most frequently mentioned positive thought about distance education. The second most frequently mentioned set of concepts concerned the convenience of students being able to learn and faculty able to teach on a schedule and from a location of their own choosing. Faculty members were concerned about a lack of human contact and of the lack of reliability of the technology for distance education. In the focus groups, faculty had specific comments about training that was useful, or not useful, to them. Focus group members usually wanted enrollment limits to distance education classes, and they wanted to be compensated as other faculty were compensated for traditional courses. Faculty also raised concerns about controlling how their intellectual property was used. Overall, the focus groups provided insights into the attitudes of faculty members about distance education. (SLD)