Abstract
The purpose of this study is to investigate the conceptions and misconceptions of instructors pertaining to their roles and competencies in distance education. Case study research design was adopted within the study. The participants, nine instructors in a public university delivering the courses in fully distance programs, was selected by using typical case sampling strategy. The data were collected through semi-structured interviews and observations on distance courses. The collected data were analysed through constant comparison analysis. The qualitative analysis revealed instructors’ conceptions of roles, competencies, and misconceptions in distance education. Roles included planning and delivery. Planning sub-theme covered the roles of environmental / technical planning and instructional design. Delivery sub-theme covered the roles of lecturing, evaluation, guidance, motivation, and material development. Participants’ conceptions of competencies included ICT competency, communication skills, and subject expertise. Finally, the study findings identified the misconceptions of the instructors. The identified misconceptions were identified as use of the same materials with face-to-face education, sufficient materials, lack of role for interaction among students, ineffectiveness of distance education, having the same roles with face-to-face education, and impossibility of distance collaboration among students. The findings imply that the instructors’ conceptions of roles and competencies are based on their experience in both face-to-face and distance education and this base unsurprisingly caused misconceptions regarding teaching in distance education.
Highlights
Distance education is independent of time and place, and often teachers and students are at different times and places to participate in teaching process
In terms of their roles, the findings indicated that the participant instructors have very broad conceptions of their roles based on both their experience in face-to-face and distance education
This case study revealed the conceptions of the instructors in terms of their roles and competencies and misconceptions regarding distance education
Summary
Distance education is independent of time and place, and often teachers and students are at different times and places to participate in teaching process. It is a theoretical and systematic education system in which students, teachers and teaching materials come together through different communication technologies (Moore, & Kearsley, 2004). The use of distance education system increases proportionally with developing technology. Distance education, which is a necessity of the age, is a system preferred for people of all ages to be educated without having to go to an educational institution. According to Gülbahar (2009) distance education processes take place in different places, require special instructional design and techniques, communicate with different technologies and require specific institutional and managerial structuring
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