Postgraduate students’ experience of a jointly-taught, distance learning degree: the example of a Russell Group university

ABSTRACT

This paper reports the results of a primary data collection exercise conducted with postgraduate students enrolled at a large Russell Group university in the UK. The aim of this study was to gain insights of students’ experience of a jointly-taught, distance learning, part-time postgraduate programme. A mixed-methods approach involving an online survey and semi-structured interviews was adopted. The results show that students concentrated their perceptions on three main areas: the academic content of the programme, seen as current, interesting and relevant to their professional lives; delivery processes, including the advantages of the flexibility and tailored approach and the disadvantages of being exposed to different teaching styles and lack of face to face interaction; the administrative and practical aspects, accounting for the majority of complaints due to the discrepancies across the two schools responsible for the delivery of the programme. Differences in experience emerged depending on gender and year of enrolment.

KEYWORDS:

• Distance learning
• jointly-taught programme
• postgraduate
• student experience

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.