Distance Education And Personality Traits

Predicting the Academic Achievement of Distance Education Students with Personality Traits

This study evaluates the direct and indirect effects of distance education student’ personality traits, self-efficacy perceptions, and academic locus of control variables on the overall academic average by testing the effects with the help of a model. The participants of the study consist of 525 distance education students, who study at two different universities in Turkey. Data obtained from the participants were analyzed using path analysis technique. The results of the study reveal that the proposed model conforms to the relation between the achievement and personality traits, locus of control, and self-efficacy perception. When the relations included

A report published on distance education in the United States reveals that over 7 million students are following distance education courses (Allen and Seaman, 2014). However, distance education is accompanied by some challenges in addition to the benefits it provides to individuals. Particularly, the responsibility of students for their education is increased. In addition, the communication and feedback problems arise since there are too many students and the technical competency for taking the course is challenging as well (Bartolic-Zlomislic and Bates, 1999). Hence, it is necessary to ensure a high-class and efficient distance education, to design, develop and manage the distance education programs accordingly. That would be possible to reduce the limitations of distance education to a minimum, if these factors are

These factors are as follows; academic performance of the students, student satisfaction, student attitude and instruction evaluation (Shachar and Neumann, 2003). Hence, it is possible to evaluate the distance education as qualified and effective if the distance education is successful in terms of these indicators. When the literature is examined, it is observed that many studies are striving to reveal the elements affecting these factors or having relationships with these factors (DeTure, 2004; Lim, 2001, Martin and Rainey, 1993; Sahin and Shelley, 2008). When the methods used for measuring these indicators are taken into consideration, we observe that tools such the questionnaire prepared by the researchers, Likert-type scales etc. are used for three indicators other than academic performance (Shachar and Neumann, 2003). Phipps and Merisotis (1999) indicate that in most of the studies conducted on distance education, researchers do not provide sufficient evidence about the validation of measurement tools that the researchers developed for measuring the characteristics such as satisfaction and perception. Furthermore, when researchers use the tools that they developed for measuring these indicators, it would be challenging to compare the results of other studies