Title: Community leaders' perceptions on distance education in China rural areas

Authors: Chizhu Ma; Harrison Hao Yang; Yongjun Wei

Addresses: School of Communications, Shandong Normal University, 88 Wenhua East Road, Jinan, China ' School of Education, State University of New York at Oswego, 7060 Route 104, Oswego, NY 13126-3599, USA ' School of Communications, Shandong Normal University, 88 Wenhua East Road, Jinan, China

Abstract: The purpose of this paper was to assess how rural community leaders perceive the 'Distance Education Project for Party Members in Rural China' and its pilot project. Community leaders' perceptions toward both projects were measured in two surveys. The results indicated that distance education was invaluable to the community members, cadres, and farmers in rural areas; and it was important to provide professional training for community leaders and/or distance education site coordinators on using computer-based technologies. The results suggested that leadership, budget, troubleshooting, courseware applicability, income of site coordinators, level of satisfaction, and rewards of participants were main factors attributed to the performance of distance education in rural areas.

Keywords: distance education; rural areas; information and communications technology; ICT; information technology; media; community leadership; perceptions; China; rural communities.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCEELL.2013.055409

International Journal of Continuing Engineering Education and Life-Long Learning, 2013 Vol.23 No.3/4, pp.367 - 375

Received: 15 Sep 2012
Accepted: 10 Feb 2013
Published online: 30 Dec 2013 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article