Students accepting digital delivery: what QILT reveals

Universities have moved teaching from the middle ages to the new millennium in a month – who knows what students will think

In the long past days of distance education, the wisdom was that older students handled solitary study via the post better than young persons, yet to collect their self-discipline ration. But who knows now, with 18 year olds said to prefer monastic solitude with digital devices to hanging out in the hood (which in any COVID-19 case is illegal).

We will get an idea from delayed student census figures and when the next QILT comes out.

But the current Quality Indicators for Learning and Teaching already offer an indication.

A Learned Reader says the data indicates that exclusively-external students are generally more positive about their course. Perhaps this could be, as in times past, because they are older. It probably is also why they think they are more prepared for study.

However, among commencing students, which surely applies to the mass of students now studying on-line for the first-time, QILT ’19 reveals remote delivery is not as popular.

For skills-development the split is 81 per cent positive for on-campus and multi-mode commencers and 77 per cent for external-mode commencers. The gap is much bigger for learner engagement, 63 per cent on-campus and 20 per cent externals. But then again, it is much narrower for teaching quality, with internals at 83 per cent and externals 86 per cent.


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