Academic Advising: Convenience and Effectiveness in Traditional and Distance Learning

Abstract

The global Covid-19 pandemic has contributed to the accelerated development of distance learning in higher education institutions and, as a result, distance synchronous and asynchronous advising using various digital tools has become widespread. The aim of the study is to identify and compare the views of students, PhD students regarding the convenience and effectiveness of academic advising in the conditions of traditional/auditory and distance learning. The author conducted an anonymous online survey Google Forms of 3037 respondents (140 PhD students, 2897 Bachelor and Master students) during 2020-2023; used IBM SPSS Statistics 23 for statistical analysis. Research shows that convenience and efficiency of academic advising improves in the direction (the mean values of convenience, efficiency and the corresponding percentages with a sufficient and high level for each academic advising form): auditory individual advising – students (M=3,38; 46,5%) → PhD students (M=3,95; 70,0%); auditory group advising – students (M=3,32; 45,2%) → PhD students (M=3,62; 60,7%); distance advising – students (M=3,32; 44,2%) → PhD students (M=3,73; 60,0%); written advising – PhD students (M=2,44; 21,4%) → students (M=2,58; 18,6%). All researched groups of respondents (students and PhD students) have maximum convenience and effectiveness in auditory and distance advising, and the least in written advising (departmental/auditory stands). The analysis shows similar results in dynamics over four years for all compared student groups according to various characteristics (gender, year of the survey, specialty, educational level, form of study) advising improvement in the direction of written → distance, auditory form. Calculation t-test shows that in most cases there are no statistically significant differences (p≤0,05) in the convenience and effectiveness advising between all independent samples of students in the following cases: for all forms academic advising to various characteristics (educational level, gender and most other; level of educational achievements for distance advising). The study found an upward trend in the rating traditional/auditory advising for students with sufficient and high levels of academic achievement. At the same time, distance advising has similar convenience and effectiveness for students with different levels of academic achievement.