March 2002 — Features
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Adding Up the Distance: Can Developmental Studies Work in a Distance Learning Environment?
Developmental education learn-ers enter community colleges with rich cultural histories and experiences, reflecting America's emerging society of diversity. In Table 1 (Page 22), these variables are compared to developmental education learners nationally as an indicator of representativeness of the learners in the study. Although statistical comparisons to national or campus profiles are inappropriate given the constraints of the study, the differences from national averages in this learner may suggest that the profile of the distance education learner differs from that of the on-campus population. If this is the case, then further study may show that distance education developmental studies learners are older, more often female and more often high school graduates than the national norm. We suspect the differences in ethnicity observed may reflect access to a computer, rather than any cultural bias for or against distance education.
Motivational factors are also important in developmental studies, so we studied motivation through surveys as part of data collection. Learners' expectations and measures of satisfaction were evaluated by a formal questionnaire at the end of the semester with open-ended response topics. Responses are noted below:
Comfort level. Participating learners claimed high levels of experience and comfort levels, with minimal levels of anxiety while using computers, the Internet and technology resources. We found that frequent faculty contact through Web pages and/or e-mail was positively correlated to a learner's comfort level with distance learning.
Orientation and support ser-vices. Those who attended mandatory formal orientation more positively noted that questions and issues were answered, and expressed greater ease of initial logon than those who had no formal orientation or a one-to-one orientation session.
Alignment of course objectives and online lesson assignments. Learners shared more positive comments related to comprehension, time-on-task and motivation when they recognized direct correlation of their online assignments with course objectives and exams.
Project Outcomes
As an indicator of progress and success, final grades from the fall 1999 semester were collected from all participating colleges. For those programs offering an 'E/'E format, in-progress measures were tabulated and assigned. Table 2 (Page 24) outlines the total sample of participants and project outcomes.
Conclusions
Our most general conclusion is that the colleges which fully integrated online curriculum with existing course objectives in their developmental math programs were the most successful with learners. We have clustered the factors that appeared to be most critical to the success of the program under the four project goals and areas of investigation, with six emergent factors for success. Of course, given the action research model employed in the study, the following four conclusions must be regarded as formative.
