Seeking the Recipe for Success in Distance Education: Lessons from a Nutrition Course

Abstract

There is much debate as to how best to exploit the potential of the internet when designing distance education (DE) courses; the "formula for success" is still to be determined. In this Darwinian struggle for "market share" Athabasca University (AU) has established itself as the leading DE university in Canada. Courses at AU include four in nutrition. Enrollment growth has been rapid in recent years. We investigated factors that may be responsible for this success. We garnered the opinions of former nutrition students using a mailed questionnaire (response rate: 57.1%; 176 returned). We investigated the following factors with respect to the highest enrollment nutrition course: (1) why students took the course at AU (rather than a similar course at another university); (2) student opinions of the course; (3) student preferences for receiving course materials in a printed format or via a computer; and (4) student opinions of AU. The leading reason for taking the nutrition course by DE is work commitment, followed by family commitment, a preference for DE, a recommendation, and no other one was available. The learning materials for the course are print based. This appears to be important as only 4% of students prefer to receive their textbook via a computer rather than printed. Another factor is that AU is well respected by its students: only 11% feel that AU courses are of lower academic credibility than similar courses at other Canadian universities.