Central Institute for Distance Education Research - FernUniversität in Hagen
22.05.2003
Projekt: download the complete paper in German as pdf file of 4MB
Results of an empirical study with enrolled students of FernUniversität regarding "connectivity" of the institution in student support
1. Question and methods
Problem: During the last couple of years FernUniversität encountered some complaints concerning responsiveness of the institution towards queries of its students. Partners looked for, could not be reached via telephone. In order to find out about the scope of the problem we conducted an empirical survey among a sample of all enrolled students in March 2003. Not only telephone-reactivity but also the question of satisfaction with the student support service of the institution and its different departments have been in the centre of this research project.Method: Feasibility aspects of the study restricted us to a mailed questionnaire because a net-questionnaire seemed not to be suitable to reach all students in the stratified sample: exactly the group refraining from modern media would turn to the telephone in search for help or even send a written snail-mail letter.
The sample we drew was N=5351 enrolled students. We received 700 (13%) feedback. This very low response rate as well as a slight over-representation of students of the liberal Arts faculty (coinciding with an overrepresentation of female students) restricted the representativity of the results. Cross-checking of the results made clear, though, that there has not been a systematic distortion of the results which could be traced back to gender.
Some further attributes of the respondents characterize our students: Slightly more than half of the respondents come from early semesters (55%), meaning that they have been studying less than four semesters.
Two thirds tell their "status" as being part-time student (66%). Among answering students we also find quite a number of advanced students, shortly before their exam.
Two third of the respondents know other University systems from previous own experiences and 60% of the respondents can be called "active" students in that they have participated last semester in sending in assignments for correction or taking part in written exams. Although we cannot state strict representativity we will interpret the results in an explorative way.
2. Results
Telephone-contact: There is only a small number of our students who during the last semester tried to make a phone-call. Mostly two targets have been called: the department (responsible for all teaching issues, and assessment) and the students-secretariat (responsible for enrolment, fees, address-change etc.).If you add up all contact instances we find that 30% have never tried to contact via telephone any of the offices. On the other hand we find a huge variance of such tries. We find more than 50% of the students being successful the first try and two thirds having been successful in trying twice. There are some instances where students tried and tried, up to 8 times and had no success.
The number of students being content with their effort to have telephone contact with the department or the administration ("very content", or "content") always surpasses the number of students answering "not content" or "disappointed".
Also the rating of success in clearing their problem is very positive: 85% felt successful..
3. Turn-around time for e-mails, fax and mail
Small numbers of instances are the basis of interpretation.Letters
More than 50% receive answers in less than one week. Only one department took longer time in responding. In seven of 12 units we find 90% of the queries answered within two weeks.FAX
In less than 4 days mostly Fax queries are answered. ( there are individuals who report little or no success, though)4. Overall evaluation of responsiveness
There are generally less than 10% of our students who report responsiveness-difficulties and then only in the case of two targets (their study centre and their official course faculty member where we find up to 15% dissatisfied students).Generally, for all units, we find the number of satisfied students surpassing the number of dissatisfied students. When ranking the units we find the official course representative in the faculty in top position, then the student's secretariat and then the study centre. The same ranking order is found when we sort according to averages of satisfaction.
For all departments between overall evaluation of the services and telephone-reactivity there are correlations of medium size (r=.2 to r=.5).
5. General evaluation of their studies with the university
78% of the respondents are satisfied or very much satisfied with their study situation at FernUniversität. Some 7% are not and 2% are very dissatisfied (the rest neither / nor).Except between general evaluation and evaluation of responsiveness of the department (not higher than .45) we found no other significant correlations.