With a new report from the Institute for Research in Contemporary Economics (IREC) in support, college students are demanding more supervision for distance learning courses, whose registrations have increased sharply in higher education establishments in the province in the wake of the pandemic.
“At the moment, there is an imbalance in the student population. There are too many people in CEGEPs in major centres, and not enough in smaller regions. We do not take into account distance education in this, because it is a recent phenomenon, ”underlines the president of the Quebec Collegiate Student Federation (FECQ), Maya Labrosse. The distribution of programs should be better managed by Quebec, she believes.
The student organization collaborated with IREC on a report entitled The college distance education offer. State of play and socio-economic issues released Tuesday morning. The report looks at the digital strategy in education and higher education deployed in 2018 under the Couillard government, funded at 58 million.
“CEGEPs in the regions have resorted to distance education to remedy the lack of staff and complete their groups,” underlines the author of the study, Éric N. Duhaime. The pandemic has accentuated the phenomenon, which generates greater rivalry between establishments. For example, 18 CEGEPs offer a distance education program in early childhood education techniques.
“It becomes counter-productive and it risks being an unhealthy competition, supports Mr. Duhaime. We can imagine that the largest establishments, which have more means, will compete with smaller establishments in more remote regions, which managed to do well.
The IREC proposes nine recommendations in its report, in particular to ensure a minimum of coordination in the offer of distance education on the scale of Quebec, to “avoid an overbidding of programs”.
Growing
The researcher made several freedom of information requests to institutions and to the government. According to data he obtained from the Ministry of Higher Education, distance education grew from the 2016-2017 school year to that of 2019-2020, going from nearly 9,900 to 12,200 registrations. The pandemic has caused the number of registrants to explode, which soared to nearly 265,000 in 2020-2021.
A sign that online courses have the wind in their sails, preliminary data for 2021-2022 shows that there are nearly 50,000 students taking distance education.
Data to be treated with caution, however, warns Eric N. Duhaime, who says that the ministry does not seem to have a clear idea of the number of registrants. The researcher also had difficulty obtaining a list of courses offered at a distance. He believes that Quebec does not have an accurate portrait, which he finds worrying given the sums invested.
“We sail by sight, without too many landmarks,” he says. We know badly the problems and challenges of distance education. »
For its part, the FECQ believes that Quebec “has taken bad turns” in terms of teaching method during the pandemic. “It can’t just be face-to-face courses that we offer remotely,” says Maya Labrosse. It needs to be adapted to the online format, so teachers need to be given sufficient financial resources and time to accomplish these tasks. She thinks that Quebec has some catching up to do in its management of distance education, compared to Ontario or British Columbia.