A Survey of Student Attitudes toward Distance Learning in Marketing Courses

At present the Central Washington University College of Business is delivering upper level accounting and business administration courses at the main campus in Ellensburg and five remote sites in the state of Washington. Most of these courses are delivered live using instruction from a professor present in the classroom. Approximating ten years ago (1994–1995) the COB began an experiment with distance learning whereby a few selected accounting and business administration courses were delivered electronically to remote sites via two way interactive television (ITV) in real time with the instructor physically present in a traditional classroom setting on the main campus. This approach to distance learning enabled the College of Business to cover multiple sections of a course with fewer teaching resources. The purpose of this study was to look at distance learning from the marketing student’s perspective and to determine whether students at live and remote sites are receiving similar perceived value with this mode of instruction. Research questions include differences in student expectations, as well as differences in comprehension, performance, and student satisfaction between live instructional and remote sites. Specific questions dealt with such issues as quality of instruction (live vs. remote) from the marketing student’s perspective. A research instrument (questionnaire) was developed, pre-tested and administered to students in marketing courses, which were delivered live at the main campus and electronically via ITV in real time to remote sites. The results of the survey were then analyzed for these two different student groups (live vs. remote) providing insight from the student’s perspective of their distance learning experiences with implications for the electronic delivery of marketing courses through distance learning in the future