Abstract:

Distance learning has been a critical approach for education during the last years. A lot of investments have taken place in the current years to support, promote and facilitate distance education. Within the online courses the main actors remain the students and instructors. Therefore, the current study focuses on the interaction among these two partners and investigates their mutual preferences from the point of view of students. In order to succeed in examining the students’ preferences a structured questionnaire survey has been developed. This questionnaire records the participants’ profile, distance education views and then examines the students own learning preferences, their fellow students desired learning preferences and what the students consider as ideal teaching styles for their instructors. The survey managed to collect 222 responses. Then, the data has been inserted into SPSS, and created a database with variables that were equal to 124. Apart from the descriptive statistics, the main focus is on the correlation analysis among the preferences stated in the questionnaire survey by the participating students. The findings present significant correlations. A great number of correlations were identified between the students’ characteristics and learning preferences of the participating students as well as their stated preferences regarding the desired teaching styles of their instructors. It should me mentioned that in essence, the current study will present selected correlated learning and teaching preferences and try to explain the underlying facts. Among the pool of identified associations, it is interesting to highlight that a positive correlation exists among the learning preference to discern the material through watching a demonstrative presentation of the information and the two qualities / abilities of the instructor to carefully set priorities and then stick to them and furthermore the instructor’s tendency not to easily allocate class time so that the most important things receive the most coverage.

Keywords:

Distance Education, Learning Styles, Teaching Styles, Italian Students, Correlation Analysis.