Abstract:

Research and evaluation are necessary for any distance education programme. A periodical review of the developmental effects on higher education made by distance education is required to be undertaken in order to find out who the users of this system are and what benefits they have derived from it. Against this. background, this paper presents the findings of an empirical research study of IGNOU learners. A qualitative dimension regarding how they perceived the relevance of the distance education programmes to their individual needs has been analysed. In other words, it analyses what benefits they derived on successful completion of their programmes of study.