Exploring a distant learning site on the internet: www.akad.ch

AKAD is a well established distant learning institution. They teach languages, university preparation and professional education in different fields of adult education. The media is information texts written for home studies and paperwork. The students answers to open questions are revised by teachers. Tutoring on phone is also available.

• General presentation on the web
• Information on the web about the quality of the institution
• Possibility to test the distant learning environment
• Conclusion

General presentation on the web

Graphical interface and arrangement of the information are outstanding:

• reasonable loading time,
• good arrangement of information,
• consistent and fast navigation,
• adequate usage of graphics (the compromise between maintaining the corporate design and usage of convenient html-code is perfectly done),
• you find the information that you expect and that you need.

Only the maintenance falls a little bit short: In the German site the loading of graphics is not optimised, in the Swiss site it is. In the German site you find information about Akad, in the Swiss site the same information is under construction.

Information on the web about the quality of the institution

You find lists of graduates from «Akad»-courses ordered by subject. So you can easily ask some former students about the quality of the education. That is all you need. The stuff members listed on the net seem to have an adequate education to perform their task.

«Akad» usually prepares for examinations controlled by state or by well known organisations. If this is not possible, they prepare for their own examinations. They keep them at a comparable standard as official examinations.

Possibility to test the distant learning environment

A sample course in a general field (introduction to economics) is made available on the net. The «Akad»-education is based on three elements:

• Information texts
• Open questions
• Tele-teacher (tutoring by phone)

All three together form a very special learning environment. It's task is to make students work and think about the subject they study. Students are treated as mature, able to think independently. Teachers help them to overcome difficulties in understanding.

Information texts

This texts are mostly simply written: short sentences, well known words, new technical terms are explained well. Good examples and a direct dialog between writer and reader are very motivating. Summaries at the end of each sections and an introductory section help the student associate the new information.

What makes it a little bit difficult to understand the text is some length (to much examples) and some lack of visual organisation (lack of subtitles, important words are not underlined, examples are not separated from the main information). But this structure of the text seems to be part of the «Akad»-system: the student is supposed to work out himself what is important. He is encouraged to make a summary by himself and to compare it to the summary provided by «Akad». As most distant learners have no chance to talk about the subject directly to someone else it makes much sense to have the students work this way on the learning material. The rewording and reorganisation transfers the knowledge from the level of learning words to the level of application of knowledge.

Control questions

Within the information text you find open questions. The students usually have to make some transfer of knowledge to write a answer. Simply recalling information just read is not sufficient. The student finds a sample answer he can look up as he please. He is taken mature enough to look up the answer not to early and to judge himself weather his answer is right. If he is uncertain he can find assistance at the Tele-teacher.

Only a set of control questions at the end of each unit is revised regularly by «Akad». This way the learning process should not fall short.

Tele-teacher

The Tele-teacher (tutoring by phone) is the only synchronous communication between teacher and student. Here the student can discuss things he did not understand or he can ask weather an answer to a control question is right or wrong.

Conclusion

The «Akad»-learning-system by phone and mail has been developed in the 50s. They sticked successfully to their system. The system might fall short in the view of the one or the other learning theory: no objectives, lack of visual organisation of texts, lack of diversity in presentation of the material and application of the knowledge. But the system seems to work.

«Akad» proofs that one can bring this system easily also to the internet. E-mail, NewsGroups and internet phone could help «Akad» to lower coasts and/or improve services. More information texts could attract attention of prospective students.