TY - JOUR
T1 - Factors Influencing Graduate Students’ Perception of online and Distance Learning in Nepal
AU - Upadhayaya, Parshu Ram
AU - Sharma, Bishnu
AU - Gnawali, Yagya Prasad
AU - Belbase, Shashidhar
N1 - Funding Information:
When the world was making rapid progress in ODL, Nepal, too, marched its step with the New Education System Plan 1971(NESP), which mandated training primary school teachers. These teachers had degrees of school leaving certificate (SLC), which was the tenth-grade certificate, and had permanent positions as primary school teachers (Pradhan, 2011). In general, they suffered from geographical obstruction and the absence of transportation to reach the training centers while working at schools. The USAID, UNICEF, and British Council came together with a plan to train these teachers from a distance. Radio Education Teacher Training Project was started in 1978 with technical and financial support from the USAID (Holmes, 1990). It took quite a while to prepare the design and materials for the training. Eventually, Radio Education Program was conducted from1984 until 1989 for training the primary school teachers with the financial and technical support of USAID (Holmes, 1990). With the growing need for teacher training, the Institute of Education (IOE) started another program called ‘teacher training’ through distance learning in 1976-77. This program was mainly to upgrade the competencies of the primary school teachers, preparing them for grade-teaching in the remote zones of Nepal (Pradhan, 2011). Despite these efforts, Nepal could not make remarkable progress in the ODL for a long time because the higher education institutions remained inactive to develop such programs. The government could not deliver any policy and guidelines to promote ODL until 2007.
Publisher Copyright:
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PY - 2021/7
Y1 - 2021/7
N2 - This study explored the perception of online and distance learning (ODL) experienced by postgraduate students in Nepal during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. An online survey on Graduate Student Perception on ODL (GSPODL) with a five-point Likert-scale was designed and administered to 71 postgraduate (57 male and 14 female) students of science education in a public higher education institution in Nepal in spring 2020. A Principal Component Analysis with rotation in Varimax Kaiser Normalization was employed in the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (IBM SPSS 26) to construct six major components of students’ perception of course delivery and participation. These components were- Quality, Opportunity, Relevance, Development, Support, and Challenges. Mann-Whitney U Test or Kruskal-Wallis Test at 0.05 level of significance showed that the participants’ views about Quality, Opportunity, Relevance, and Support were significantly different across their place of Residence (rural and urban residences). Likewise, there was a significant difference in their views on the Relevancy of the ODL with respect to Device Use. There was no significant difference in their views across the variables Gender, Ethnicity, School Type, and Device Use in all other criteria. These results demonstrated that participants’ hometown location made a big difference in their perception of online and distance classes’ Quality.
AB - This study explored the perception of online and distance learning (ODL) experienced by postgraduate students in Nepal during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. An online survey on Graduate Student Perception on ODL (GSPODL) with a five-point Likert-scale was designed and administered to 71 postgraduate (57 male and 14 female) students of science education in a public higher education institution in Nepal in spring 2020. A Principal Component Analysis with rotation in Varimax Kaiser Normalization was employed in the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (IBM SPSS 26) to construct six major components of students’ perception of course delivery and participation. These components were- Quality, Opportunity, Relevance, Development, Support, and Challenges. Mann-Whitney U Test or Kruskal-Wallis Test at 0.05 level of significance showed that the participants’ views about Quality, Opportunity, Relevance, and Support were significantly different across their place of Residence (rural and urban residences). Likewise, there was a significant difference in their views on the Relevancy of the ODL with respect to Device Use. There was no significant difference in their views across the variables Gender, Ethnicity, School Type, and Device Use in all other criteria. These results demonstrated that participants’ hometown location made a big difference in their perception of online and distance classes’ Quality.
KW - Nepal
KW - Online and distance education
KW - flexible learning
KW - teacher education
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85112172000&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85112172000&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.17718/tojde.961844
DO - 10.17718/tojde.961844
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85112172000
SN - 1302-6488
VL - 22
SP - 236
EP - 269
JO - Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education
JF - Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education
IS - 3
ER -