ACFAS | 531 – The Challenges of Distance Education in Higher Education [Event in French]

Summary

Over the past three decades, digital technology has become ubiquitous in our Western societies. Several studies attest to the use of digital technology in everyday life, whether by older adults (Quan-Haase, Martin, & Schreurs, 2016) or by young adults (Mihailidis, 2014). Higher education institutions have not been immune to this transition to digital technology (Siemens, Gašević, & Dawson, 2015), among other reasons because of its positive effects on teaching and learning (Sung, Chang, & Liu, 2016). With the advent of digital technology, distance learning in higher education has also been transformed, and several course modalities emerged (Siemens et al., 2015; Skrypnyk et al., 2015), such as online courses, hybrid courses, blended courses, etc. The implementation of these course modalities will be promoted in the coming years in Quebec (Government of Quebec, 2018) and Canadian (Bates et al., 2017) bimodal higher education institutions for their long-term development. By bimodal universities, we mean higher education institutions that offer both face-to-face and distance education courses. In fact, more and more higher education institutions in Quebec, whether at the college or university level, have already adopted these course modalities, and several examples can be consulted online. However, this adoption has brought its share of challenges, such as the design and implementation of these courses, student-teacher and student-student interactions, teaching practices, student learning, retention, engagement and evaluation, to name a few. The purpose of this symposium is to explore the current state of research in relation to these challenges. .

Organized by

Sawsen Lakhal UdeS – Université de Sherbrooke et Nadia Naffi – Université Laval