The quality of distance education and distance learning at Egilsstaðir Upper Secondary School

Abstract

In recent years distance education in Icelandic upper secondary schools has been growing in popularity and about half of the upper secondary schools in the country now offer some type of distance learning. That includes Egilsstaðir Upper Secondary School where the distance mode has grown steadily and students have expressed their satisfaction with teacher interaction, course organization and the school’s LMS (learning management system), among other things. Over the years Egilsstaðir Upper Secondary School has become one of the largest providers of distance education in Iceland, despite being located in rural East-Iceland. Their unique semester system has also become an attraction; usually schools in Iceland divide their academic year into two semesters (autumn and spring), whereas in Egilsstaðir Upper Secondary School, each semester is split into two shorter terms. That means students can complete a course in just about 8 weeks.

Despite the growth and increased popularity of distance education, it has proved difficult to assess the quality of distance learning globally. Various standards have been developed, but with a difference in emphasis. An ICDE report has shown lack of harmonized standards for organizations to compare with others, which creates a certain ambiguity around assessment and expectations of quality in distance education.

Despite this lack, common themes can be found regarding the skills and mentality desirable for teachers to have in order to succeed in online teaching. With those themes in mind, the aim of this article is to shed light on factors contributing to increased quality of distance education. Those factors involve interaction, organization and teacher preparation. Research has shown the importance of interaction in education, which can be categorized in three types of interactions. Those types involve studentteacher interaction, student-student interaction and student-content interaction. The article focuses on student-teacher interaction and student-student interaction, as well as course organization and pedagogy. Teachers’ technical skills also examined and the concerns that have been raised regarding distance teaching preparation.

The article also discusses distance education at Egilsstaðir Upper Secondary School and reports on a survey on distance teaching submitted to the school teaching staff in the autumn of 2021. The survey was designed in collaboration with the schools’ internal evaluation committee and contained thirteen multiple choice questions as well as five open questions. The purpose of the survey was to examine how the school’s teaching reflects a previous review of the quality of distance education. The survey also aimed to reveal the strengths and weaknesses of the distance learning programme at Egilsstaðir Upper Secondary School. 19 teachers from the school who currently teach, or have taught, in distance mode participated in the survey. The teachers emphasised the importance of positive interaction, support and flexibility when teaching by distance and the results indicated their strengths regarding course organization and student interaction. The results also showed teachers’ weaknesses when it came to student-student interaction, which in a few cases seemed to be caused by insufficient experience of distance teaching and insufficient knowledge. Only 16% of the participants felt they had received appropriate education concerning distance teaching in their teacher training programmes.

There have been concerns about teachers’ technical skills and the lack of necessary preparation for teachers who teach by distance. This article sheds a further light on the importance of teachers acquiring the skills and knowledge required by distance learning, and the need for further teacher training when it comes to teaching from a distance. It is important to understand that factors such as communication, technical skills, learning environment and organization vary depending on whether the education is conducted locally or by distance. It is unreasonable to assume that teachers will acquire those skills by experience alone. Thus, appropriate training must be made available.