Assessing and Comparing Perceptions of Distance Education in the U.S. and Britain with Kazakhstan

681 Words2 Pages

Introduction
Previous experiences show how education is expensive, time consuming process requiring travelling long distances. Changes were observed when top universities like Harvard and Berkley offered distance education (DE) program for anyone desiring to study (Lentel, 2012, pp. 23-24). Similarly in Kazakhstan, for instance, there is type of education program involving DE - ‘zaochoe obuchenie’. However, the quality of such education and learning experience are not well studied.
Research papers assessing DE involve questioning students and comparison of their knowledge with students sitting in the classroom (Pardasani et al., 2012, pp. 414-416). However, after obtaining knowledge and statement of accomplishment, the perception of professors and employers are not assessed. Especially, this problematic in Kazakhstan where concept of distance education is not well understood. This research will try to explore problem of DE, analyze responses of professors about its quality and compare thoughts of employers from U.S. and Britain with employers from Kazakhstan about DE.
Motivation
Concept of DE is usually associated with development of technologies. Improvement of technologies, making DE more realistic questions whether it is different from real classes (Fuegen, 2012, pp. 233-238). Problem is that Kazakhstan employers do not know much about learning style and quality of education. In addition, according to the law only people with disabilities, living outside of the country, doing military service, and studying in condensed educational programs can be officially DE students (Profit.kz, 2012). This problem is interesting as questions need in education which is not credited well. Making DE more real through development of technol...

... middle of paper ...

... try to contribute to spread of DE to wider audience.

References

Castaño-Muñoz, J., Sancho-Vinuesa,T., & Duart, J., M. (2013). Online Interaction in Higher Education: Is There Evidence of Diminishing Returns? The International Review of Research in Open and Distance learning, 14(5), 240-257.
Fuegen, S. (2012). The Impact of Mobile Technologies on Distance Education. TechTrends , 56(6), 49-56.
Pardasani, M.J., Goldkind, L., Heyman, L.,C., & Cross-Denny, B. How Much Does the Distance in Distance Education Matter? Our Students Speak. Social Work Education
31(4), 406–421
Lentell, H. (2012). Distance learning in British universities: is it possible? Open Learning
27 (1), 23–36
Profit.(2012). V Kazakkhstane utverzhdeny pravila distancionnogo obucheniya. Retrieved from: http://profit.kz/news/8280/V-Kazahstane-utverzhdeni-pravila-distancionnogo- obucheniya/

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