Eureka! Institutional Repository

Quality in the field of education has been a matter of great importance in recent years. In particular, distance learning (DL), as part of the fast-moving and dynamic educational reality worldwide, aims to continuously improve its services. The purpose of the research is to evaluate the learning experience of postgraduate students in the range of Open and Distance Education (ODE). Specifically, the study explores the motivations that drive students to opt for a postgraduate degree program, if their expectations of it were confirmed after completing their studies and the degree to which they are satisfied with factors such as workload, communication with teachers, their evaluation/rating, their study support, overall curriculum, previous experience of study and human and material resources. The study involved 103 postgraduate students who completed a postgraduate program in the range of ODE during the academic years 2016-2017 and 2017-2018, who completed a closed-ended questionnaire. The results show that the incentives that drive students to opt for a postgraduate degree program are the benefits they will gain for their careers, the personal interest that distinguishes them and their improvement or development. Moreover, their expectations of the degree program they chose were confirmed to a satisfactory degree after completing their studies. Also, students who participated in the research were satisfied with factors such as communicating with teachers, evaluating/rating, supporting their study, curriculum as a whole and human resources. On the other hand, they are not satisfied with the material resources, the workload of their distance studies which has proven to be higher than they expected while at the same time stating that they can more easily manage distance studies than those based solely on face-to-face teaching. In conclusion, this research study may prove useful on the one hand to higher education participants who wish to improve the quality of educational services provided taking into account students' perceptions and on the other hand to researchers aiming to study the quality of educational services and the satisfaction of trainees.