Abstract—Our paper presents the underlying educational principles along with the evaluation results for an innovative project-based postgraduate distance education course. We show how designing the course in terms of sound pedagogical principles has led to an authentic learning experience in which students gain usable knowledge that they can apply in their workplace. Student evaluations clearly demonstrate a positive student learning experience and student pass rates provide a clear indication that students are achieving the intended learning outcomes. Whilst being innovative, delivering a taught project-based postgraduate course brings a number of challenges and these will be discussed.
Index Terms—Distance, postgraduate, authentic, project, teaching, learning, evaluation
Iain Doherty is with Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, Learning Technology Unit, The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand (Email:i.doherty@auckland.ac.nz)
Cite: Iain Doherty, "Delivering Effective Distance Education Through Engaging Students in Authentic Learning Activities A Learning Design and Longitudinal Research Results," International Journal of Information and Education Technology vol. 1, no. 3, pp. 247-253, 2011.