ATTITUDE OF WOMEN LEARNERS TOWARDS DISTANCE EDUCATION: A Comparative Analysis

Abstract

The study was conducted in Uttar Pradesh’s Meerut district and data were collected from 43 women distance learners of Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) and 77 women distance learners of Swami Vivekanand Subharti University (SVSU) following purposive sampling method. The comparative attitude level was measured in eight subareas of distance learning viz., general, admission procedure, self learning material (SLM), multimedia, assignments, counseling, study centers and evaluation system. The findings revealed that women distance learners have positive attitude towards distance learning and no significant difference was found between the overall attitudes of learners from both universities. However, the IGNOU learners exhibited more favorable attitude than SVSU learners on five sub-areas of attitude towards distance learning namely admission procedure, assignments, counseling, study centre and evaluation system with a significant difference only in assignments area (P<0.05). The related implications for distance education are discussed.

Keywords

• Distance education, attitude of women learners, India

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