This study, an analysis of participants in university
extension liberal arts non-credit courses at the University
of British Columbia, is based on 1005 interviews which were
given during the spring of 1968.
The clientele has been described in terms of socio economic
characteristics, motivation, participation in adult
education, reactions about the scheduling of classes, and
methods of obtaining information concerning the courses. The
data were furthermore utilized interesting the hypothesis that
no statistically significant differences at the one per cent
level existed between males and females, between veterans and
novices, or between non-committed and committed learners with
respect to selected socio-economic and psychological characteristics and specified ways of obtaining information about
extension courses.
Participants differed from the general population in
that they had a higher ratio of women to men, constituted
greater percentages of people in each of the age categories
from 25 to 54 years, possessed higher socio-economic status
and were more actively involved in the formally organized
life of their community. Learning-orientation—the desire to seek knowledge
for its own sake—emerged as the prime motivator for most
participants. Three-quarters of them reported previous involvement
in adult education, and a similar proportion indicated strong intentions to enrol in future extension classes.
One-half of the clientele were novices in university extension
classes. Virtually all respondents resided in the greater
Vancouver area, and spent less than thirty minutes travelling
to class.
Direct mailing techniques of promotional material influenced more participants than did newspaper advertising.
Less than one-third of all respondents indicated that they
had learned about classes through other people.
Testing of the hypothesis revealed statistically significant differences between male and female participants
with respect to educational level, goal-orientation, learning-orientation, interest in subjects, attendance during specified
times of the day, preferences for starting times of classes,
attendance on specified days of the week, interest in weekend
seminars, and the type of announcement received for the course.
Participants with prior experience in adult education
differed significantly from novices in their distributions
according to age, occupational ranking, income, social participation, type of announcement received for the course, and the extent of their use of the two step information flow.
Committed and non-committed learners were significantly
different from each other in the distributions according to
marital status, income, learning-orientation, previous participation in university extension activities, interest in
weekend seminars, and in their utilization of the two step
information flow. / Education, Faculty of / Educational Studies (EDST), Department of / Graduate
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UBC/oai:circle.library.ubc.ca:2429/41841 |
| Date | January 1969 |
| Creators | Ganz, Lothar Benno |
| Publisher | University of British Columbia |
| Source Sets | University of British Columbia |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, Thesis/Dissertation |
| Rights | For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use. |
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