The identification and analysis of factors perceived as important to the success of interactive distance education

The purpose of this study was to provide distance education instructors, who teach over a two-way audio and two-way video interactive system, a list of strategies or skills that could be applied in the distance education environment to help ensure success. Further, differences in perceptions among users of the system regarding importance of these strategies were identified. A Delphi study was done, utilizing a professional panel, to establish important strategies for distance education. The results of the Delphi study resulted in the identification of 99 important items. These items were placed in a survey which was administered to four groups of users of the Iowa Communications Network to determine perceptions concerning importance of these items. The validated survey was administered to the four groups made up of a 9 member professional panel, 20 community college faculty members and 247 of their students (93 students at origination sites and 154 students at receive sites). Two non-parametric tests were utilized to identify significant differences in perceptions of importance on the items in the survey. The results of the statistical analysis of the Kruskal-Wallace H Test indicated that, in 89 of the items, there were no significant differences found at There was considerable agreement between the participants as to importance level of the strategies for successful distance education. The faculty and professional panel recorded the least differences in both tests indicating close professional agreement. The largest number of significant differences were found between the students at the origination sites and each of the other groups