The Impact of ‘Virtualization’ on Independent Study Course Completion Rates: The British Columbia Open University Experiment - DETA Center | National Research Center for Distance Education and Technological Advancements (DETA)

Title:

The Impact of ‘Virtualization’ on Independent Study Course Completion Rates: The British Columbia Open University Experiment

Author/s:

L. Giguere

Year:

2009

Excerpt:

… adopted a visualization strategy based primarily on twinning off-line independent study distance education courses (textbook-based with study guide and telephone and e-mail tutor support) with alternative online versions (textbook-based with integrated conferencing … In this study we benchmarked successful completion rates (SCRBs) for BCOU’s online academic courses and compared those to off-line course benchmarks. Online SCRBs are consistantly higher than off-line SCRBs.