Abstract:

Open and Distance Learning (ODL) has revolutionized education all over the world, creating a strong interest in investigating how to enrich distance educational processes, as well as the quality of the result [1]. Alongside, Higher Educational Institutions (HEI), which provide distance education, bring new opportunities for innovation in education, increasing the use of the technological means [2]. This intense use does not only aim to address the multiple challenges of the global continuous changes but to improve the quality of the programs and to shift the focus from traditional lecturing to more learner-centered approach [3]. This paper is a part of an ongoing research about the improvement of distance educational process, focusing on the educational material, which is the most important component in distance education [4]. In this study we explore the innovation that Hellenic Open University implemented in six new postgraduate programs, where the provided educational content was exclusively digital. The sample of this research consists of 1026 newcomer students of the 88 different groups of the six new postgraduate programs, who completed the courses surveys. Following a qualitative model, we tried to ensure in-depth understanding about student’s engagement with exclusively digital educational content and capture their point of view about their experience. The results of this study enable us to recognize the particularities and the improvements of digital material about organization and structure that should be carry out in order to meet the requirements of distance students.

References:
[1] A. Bozkurt, E. Akgun-Ozbek, S. Yilmazel, E. Erdogdu, , H. Ucar, Guler, ... & G. D. Dincer, . "Trends in distance education research: A content analysis of journals 2009-2013." The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning 16.1, 2015.
[2] K., Adrian, and L.Price. "Technology-enhanced learning and teaching in higher education: what is ‘enhanced’and how do we know? A critical literature review." Learning, media and technology 39.1 6-36, 2014.
[3] R., Moreno, and R. E. Mayer. "A learner-centered approach to multimedia explanations: Deriving instructional design principles from cognitive theory." Interactive multimedia electronic journal of computer-enhanced learning2.2 12-20, 2000.
[4] R.Kalantzi, D.Sideris, N. Spyropoulou, G. Androulakis “Changing the Gear: Adopting Inter-institutional Collaborative Course Development as the Policy for Distance Higher Education in Greece”. In Proc. of the Online, Open and Flexible Higher Education Conference, EADTU, 61–68, 2016.

Keywords:

Open and distance learning, digital educational material, higher education.