Education Commons^™

Reducing Isolation Through Regional Mentors And Learning Communities: A Way To Support Rural Learners, Nancy K. Glomb, T. Midenhall, L. Mason, Charles L. Salzberg

Special Education and Rehabilitation Counseling Faculty Publications

Reinforcing and facilitating learning communities is a strategy that has been used to decrease attrition rates in traditional campus-based programs, and it has been hypothesized that applying principles of learning communities in distance education programs could have similar positive outcomes. To facilitate the development and maintenance of regional learning communities within the Mild/Moderate Distance Degree and Licensure Program at Utah State University, highly successful graduates of the program are employed as mentors within each broadcast locality to engineer regional opportunities for studying and socialization. Program evaluation respondents indicate that mentoring experiences were very helpful as they progressed through the courses …