Video in distance education: ITFS vs. web-streaming: Evaluation of student attitudes

The use of video in distance education courses has a long tradition, with many colleges and universities having been delivering distance education courses with video since the 80's using the Instructional Television Fixed Service (ITFS) and cable television. With the emergence of the Internet and the increased access bandwidths from private homes to the Internet, the delivery of distance education video via web-streaming has become more widespread and appears poised to replace the delivery of distance education video through ITFS/cable TV. At this juncture in the history of distance education video delivery it is important to take the student attitudes toward these different forms of educational video delivery into consideration. This naturalistic evaluation study examined and compared the attitudes of a total of close to 360 students who had taken distance education classes with video, whereby approximately 180 of the students had participated in classes with ITFS/cable TV video delivery and approximately 180 students had taken classes with web-streaming video delivery. The overall student satisfaction was found to be approximately the same with either form of distance education video delivery. However, there were statistically significant differences in the student attitudes towards specific aspects of the distance education video, such as perceived video quality, technical problems, and preferences for control over the instructional flow.