Life-World Factors of Distance Education Students and their Influence on Learning Achievement

Abstract

Every human being has an individual demand for specific (further) development of competence, depending on his or her personal life phase. On the grounds of its history, development, experiences, and the structure of its modularized study programmes, the Fern Universität in Hagen as a lifelong learning university in the German-speaking world helps to satisfy this demand (Vogt, 2012). The seamless learning approach supports flexibility of “distance” studies in terms of place, time and content (see for example Krey et al., 2014),which attracts above all non-traditional students (Alheit et al., 2008) who have completed a first degree and are now working, in the age group 25 to 38 (59%) and 39 to over 60 (Fern Universität in Hagen, 2014).Analyses of the studies or learning achievements of distance education students take into account in particular the motivation for studying (Kaiser, 1997; Baacke, 1978), the particular socio-economic situation of female distance education students (Prümmer, 1997), or study materials (Richardson et al., 1999).