Development of the Distance Education Learning Environments Survey (DELES) for Higher Education
Research Significance
Only one learning environment instrument is currently available for higher education distance education-the DOLES. The DOLES focuses on World Wide Web-delivered science education with a distinct Australasian focus, thus it is inappropriate for use in studying general distance delivered higher education. The availability of a Distance Education Learning Environments Survey (DELES), as outlined in this paper, for a more general audience enables practitioners and researchers to examine educational learning environments in tertiary education settings with an altogether new instrument. The DELES allows unparalleled opportunities for sources of information in program and course evaluation as outlined below:
- Learning environment instruments are economical in that they do not require trained observers and significant coding (Jegede, Fraser, & Fisher, 1998) resulting from interviews or observations. The DELES is easily be employed by practitioners, evaluators, and researchers alike.
- The learning environment can be assessed in the beta press, that is, from the perception of the learner, rather than exclusively in the alpha press, or that which is assessed by a detached third party (Fraser, 1998b), offering the advantage of characterising a setting through the eyes of the participants, thus collecting information that an observer could overlook or deem insignificant (Fraser, 1998a).
- Student and instructor perceptions can be contrasted with those of external evaluators or observers with this instrument.
Likewise, in the context of the larger research setting, in an era of an increasing call for national and international distance education, researchers and evaluators can use this instrument to complement distance education research that currently focuses primarily on student achievement, attitudes and behaviours (Harnar, Brown, and Mayall, 2000), student participation (Grasinger, 1999), the role of technology in a distance education environment (Jamieson, 1999), the tired 'no significant difference' between traditional vs. distance education argument (Lane, n.d.), and the 'how-to' instructor methodology research found predominantly in conference proceedings (Squire & Johnson, 2000).
What is most significant about this study is that, as we progress through the information age, the forces of educommerce and e-learning have converged to the point that education as a consumer-based commodity, or knowledge product designed to "preserve and expand" (Connell, 2001, p. 1) the customer base of businesses through distance education, is creating new demands upon universities to play as "market actors" (Traub, 2000, p. 50) in what was a $23 billion market experiencing an annual rate of growth of 12% in the United States in 2003 (Eduventures, 2003). Universities experiencing pressure to become part of the profit-driven market must preserve that which gives universities status as unique institutions of higher learning (Rose Communications, 2001). Post-secondary distance education not grounded in high-quality teaching and learning theory, with respect to social and psychological determinants and effects of the environment in which they are presented stand to become diminished, appearing less of a scholarly pursuit and more of a "work-for-hire" (Traub, 2000, p. 5) institution blurring the lines between university status and business profit making.
Finally, as pressure continues to increase on higher-education instructors to teach in some form of distance model, those who have several years of experience teaching in face-to-face classrooms need to develop new models and methodologies if they are to continue to provide high-quality courses demanded by a global education market (Conrad, 2004; Slay, 1998; Thor & Scarafiotti, 2004). This instrument can assist instructors in improving their teaching, which aids in maintaining the historical significance of the university, leading to improvements in post-secondary distance education as a whole.