Running head: BARRIERS TO DISTANCE LEARNING IN RURAL

Barriers to Distance Learning in Rural Schools

Amanda K. Yarbrough
Liberty University Online

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ABSTRACT
Distance education is beneficial for rural students who often do not have the advantages
of having a large selection of courses often offered by larger, urban schools; however, there are
several barriers to accessing distance education in rural areas. While socioeconomics has a
large impact, one of the largest barriers is accessibility to broadband connection and support.
SUMMARY
In 2012, there were over 21 million students enrolled in some type of distance education
course (US Department of Education, 2014). Students enroll in these course for various reasons
including flexibility to work around jobs, family, and location. While distance education has
brought secondary and post-secondary classes to areas where students would normally have to
travel hours away from home to attend class or not be able to attend at all, there are still several
barriers in place for rural students.
The first barrier is often distance learning courses themselves. Distance education
courses are offered both synchronously, in which the student and instructor are connected via a
live feed that has almost instantaneous feedback, and asynchronously, where content is delivered
either in print or through media and interaction between professors and students occur at
different times. While it has been found that the best type of course is one that is both
synchronous and asynchronous, students involved in distance learning still often feel isolated
from other students (Owens, Hardcastle and Richardson, 2009). Through student interaction on
platforms such as Blackboard, students can still collaborate together to share ideas and support
one another.
A second barrier to distance learning in rural schools is the seeming unimportance of it in
rural school districts. On the secondary level, distance education has been seen as a way to

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supplement electives offered in a school such as foreign languages, psychology and sociology,
but not as a means for teaching core curriculum such as mathematics, language arts, social
studies and science. However, as funding for highly-qualified teachers goes down in rural school
districts, there may be a greater turn to distance education courses to fulfil the need for core
curriculum teachers (de la Varre, Hannum, and Irvin, 2010).
A third barrier rural students face that is unique from urban students is difficulties in
accessing broadband internet. In 2008, it was estimated that over 18 million college students
access the internet at least once a month, but the majority of those students are in urban areas.
Students in rural areas mostly access the Internet from home (29.41%), college campus
(21.85%), commercial cyber cafes (18.49%) and community information centers such as libraries
(14.29%). (Ahmed Loan, 2011). According to the Federal Communications Committee,
approximately 100 million Americans do not have broadband internet access at home (2015).
Because of this, rural students can have difficulty downloading content and multi-media
information required to effectively complete courses. If broadband is available, often connection
is lost in the middle of online activities due to lack of upgrades to infrastructure (Parks, Gregory,
Fletcher, Adlington and Gromik, 2015). In order to be able to get course materials and
participate in online forums, some students are forced to travel several miles in order to access
the internet at libraries, internet cafs or other educational institutions.
A fourth barrier is the lack of computer and technical support available in rural areas. If a
computers or auxiliary equipment such as printers and scanners fail, students have to travel
further to have their equipment fixed or have to ship it to another location and wait for return.
So what are the solutions to these problems?
Barrier 1:

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Barrier 2:
Barrier 3: While not all areas have the ability to support broadband internet access due to the
lack of upgrades to infrastructure, all areas have the ability to support internet through the use of
satellites. In 2006, the European Union piloted Rural Wings, a project in which satellites were
used to bring internet capabilities to remote parts of Greece, Spain, Sweden, France, Romania,
Cyprus, Estonia, Poland, the United Kingdom, Israel, Armenia, Georgia, and Switzerland. A
group of local buildings such as schools, town halls, municipalities or businesses are equipped
with DVB/RCS satellite terminals that have WiFi connected so that internet can be expanded
throughout the community (Kahnwald, Khler, Makri, Uzunoglu, Hansson, Larsson, Mihailidis,
P., Sotiriou, Sotiriou, and Koulouris, 2007).
CONCLUSION

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