The Challenges Distance Education Students Experience during Their Education Degree Program in the Faculty of Education at the University of Namibia

The main purpose of this study was to identify the challenges distance education students experience during their education degree studies. The specific objectives studied included the following- to investigate the technical and technology limitations, limited interactivity between lecturers and students and among distance education students, and lack of support from administrative staff. The research design employed in this study was the survey research design. The distance education students were asked to complete an online survey to determine their experiences doing their studies on a distance mode. The target population for this study included all distance education students (1675) who are enrolled at the Centre for Open, Distance and eLearning (CODEL) at the University of Namibia in 2020. The questionnaire instrument was administered via google form, 354 responses were received in spreadsheet formats, and chats generated from the responses, the Statistical Package of the Social Sciences (SPSS) file, the descriptive and reliability statistics for all the variables. Based on the findings of this study, this study concludes that the University of Namibia needs to improve slow internet speeds, limited internet access, lecturer student interaction, collaboration between distance education students, lack of computers, among others. Some of the recommendations made by this study include- increased funding in ICT infrastructure for distance education students, better training for lecturers on how to deliver pedagogy and the CODeL administrative staff to better support distance education students.