Abstract
<p class="Articletitle">There have been few efforts to investigate the concept of quality from learners’ perspectives or to incorporate their needs and perceptions in quality standards in distance education. This is rather surprising, particularly in distance education contexts where the quality of the learning is not derived only from the products and services delivered to the learner but also from the knowledge, understanding, and relationships that are codeveloped by both teachers and learners during the teaching and learning processes. This study proposes and verifies a conceptual model of the 10 dimensions of quality in distance education from the learners’ perspectives and investigates gender differences in the perception of quality in distance education with 1,665 distance learners from 11 Asian countries and one territory. The results show that all 10 dimensions across supportive, pedagogical, and environmental domains in the model are important in judging quality in distance education. Also, gender differences are found in the perceived importance of 10 quality dimensions, barriers to DE, important supporters, and types of support received. The implications of these findings are discussed and suggestions for further research and development are offered.</p>
Highlights
As Jung (2011) observes, the quality assurance (QA) criteria developed in various settings tend to be responsive to the perspectives of distance education (DE) institutions, assessors, and funding bodies and often ignore learners’ views on quality
This study aims to (a) evaluate the factor structure underlying this conceptual model at the domain and dimensional levels; (b) identify important quality criteria within each dimension in assuring the quality of DE from the perspective of Asian learners; and (c) discover gender differences in learners’ perceptions of quality in DE, learning barriers, and supports
In this study, the root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) was employed because it is less sensitive to sample size and takes into account the complexity of the model and the degrees of freedom
Summary
As Jung (2011) observes, the quality assurance (QA) criteria developed in various settings tend to be responsive to the perspectives of distance education (DE) institutions, assessors, and funding bodies and often ignore learners’ views on quality. Asian Learners’ Perception of Quality in Distance Education and Gender Differences Jung tion Council’s “Guidelines for Regulating the Establishment and Operation of Open and Distance Learning Institutions” requires DE institutions to attend to areas such as management of academic and administrative matters, policies and mechanisms for curriculum development, and staff training. Twenty-four common benchmarks for quality online education developed by the Institute for Higher Education in the USA cover QA items important for e-learning providers to assess and improve their quality (Phipps & Merisotis, 2000). In order to improve learning experience and performance of distance learners, it is essential to fully understand their perceptions of quality DE
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