The Critical Distance-Learning Metrics for Student Needs and Satisfaction

Many people in educational institutions, governmental departments, and training organizations are searching for innovative methods to provide quality education for training students. Under the system of traditional education, educators have tried hard to find innovative and effective means to overcome some educational problems. Students are unable to attend classes due to some situational barriers such as time, transportation, and location. As for institutional barriers, some schools do not have adequate professional curriculums and proficient instructors to reach educational goals. In that case, it is necessary for these schools to hire facu1ty from the advanced educational institutions overseas such as American and English universities. Many educational workers are considering the use of technology-based distance learning system to meet those needs. By using the following five computer technologies delivery tools: 1) ISDN-based videoconferencing, 2) the compressed video/audio recording, 3) the Internet, 4) the World-Wide Web, and 5) the electronic mail, a multimedia distance education system will be established between countries throughout the world. All of the constructional phases of a combined distance learning system are highly interactive; each has an impact on the others. Likewise, information of target students\u27 feedback obtained from an evaluation phase will have a direct influence on how future iterations of the distance learning media are designed and carried out. Based on an existing experimental combined computer-technology distance learning system between the College of Pharmacy of NSU, Florida and the National Defense Medical College, Taiwan, the goal of the research is developing a set of quantitative metric to evaluate the distance learning system. A fifty-five-item questionnaire had been filled out by all target students. The contribution of this evaluation is not only to elicit reactions from target students for systems satisfaction levels and educational delivery problems, but to give the researcher critical strengths or weaknesses on the useful and appropriate guidelines for future distance learning system refining