| The field of distance education is changing so rapidly that even the term "information superhighway" may seem archaic to many forward thinking educators. As distance education has increased in popularity and acceptance by persons unable to attend a campus-based program, critics of the program have become more vocal. This research addressed the issue of quality in distance education from the point of view of the students. An instrument known as SERVQUAL was adapted for use in this study.;SERVQUAL is a survey instrument based upon a theory that defines service quality as composed of five dimensions of tangible, responsiveness, assurance, reliability, and empathy. The difference between the expectations and the perceptions of the consumer is the measure of service quality that an organization delivers to its customers (Zeithaml, Parasuraman, & Berry, 1990).;An adapted SERVQUAL survey was mailed to persons enrolled in distance education programs in two adjacent western states. Institution I is a four-year research university and Institution II is a multicampus two-year community college. Each institution delivers course work through an interactive video system.;The results from the 225 respondents in this study suggest that a high quality education is a concept that may have many equally important characteristics. Students at both institutions value professors' classroom preparation, fair grading procedures; appropriate course requirements, and the intellectual stimulation of courses. In this study a positive but weak relationship (p. 001) existed between academic and service quality and behavioral intentions, perhaps, because these students are not able to transfer to another institution. Students' comments recommended a more quantitative approach to assessment.;In contrast to previous studies using SERVQUAL, the statistical results of this study revealed a unidimensional factor called quality and added to the research that is critical of the use of difference scores to define a construct. |
