Challenges of women students in Distance education programme In kenyan universities

Abstract

This is a gender based studies of challenges of distance Education research. The study adopted descriptive survey research design with a biased on quantitative approach. A structured quantitative posing 15 challenges expected or assumed to be faced by women students pursuing undergraduate degree courses through Distance Education (DE) in Kenya, was mailed by the researcher to 1600 women selected randomly from both public and private universities scattered all over Kenya. Achieving a response rate of 75.5%. This study revealed irregular and unsystematic supply of reaching material (modules, untimely tutorial help, poor quality of supplied learning materials and lack of study centre) in most of the learning institutions are the first four most severe challenges of women learners in distance education. Some institutions make the DE students appear in all the papers with regular students, longer turnaround time (TAT) of supplied materials, learning in isolation, accommodation at the venue of the personal contact programmes (PCPs), compulsory participation in PCPs respectively are the other next six challenges, ranked by students in order of severity which affect the women learners negatively. The researcher has therefore suggested in this study how some of these challenges or problems can be taken care of by the DE learning institutions in Kenya.