WOMEN’S DIALOG AND DISTANCE LEARNING: A University in the Arab World

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to identify the relationship between the Arab women’s dialog and their perceptions of distance education, their personal relevance with the distance education paradigm, and their life affiliations within a distance education environment. Aspects of Moore’s Transactional Distance Theory were investigated in this study. Transactional distance education occurs in an environment when teachers and learners are separated. This separation deals with learners’ and teachers’ behaviors and affects both. This study is a descriptive study employed a mix of methods. A sample of 150 active female learners at the Al-Quds Open University in Paletsine-Gaza Strip Branch was surveyed. A response rate of 80% was obtained. Furthermore, eight females from the responses were telephone interviewed. Descriptive statistics and Pearson correlations were calculated to identify significant relationships of life affiliations, personal relevance satisfaction, and perception of distance education dimensions towards female students’ dialog in a distance education setting. The findings indicated that life affiliations had no significant differences on the women’s dialog measures through distance education. However, the personal relevance and the perceptions about distance education were significantly related to the concept of women's dialog.

Keywords

• Aspects of Moore’s
• the women’s dialog
• transactional distance theory
• women in distance education