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Mind Garden, Inc. Releases the Distance Education Learning Environment Survey (DELES)

 
Menlo Park, CA
June 15, 2020

Mind Garden, Inc., publisher of the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI), announces the release of a new educational psychology survey, the Distance Education Learning Environment Survey (DELES), which enables leaders to measure and characterize key psychosocial aspects of online education. The DELES was developed by Scott Walker, ScEdD, and it has been administered internationally by institutional online programs.

The DELES is grounded in the author’s distance education curricular design work with multiple online master’s programs, and it brings focus to the important psychosocial aspects of learning environments. “What often goes unexamined by instructors, instructional designers, and administrators alike is that we are dealing with human beings, their psychological responses to the online environment, and the social interactions between participants in a distance education digital classroom.”—Scott Walker.

The coronavirus pandemic has profoundly impacted learning environments, with near-term and far-reaching implications for the future of education. A recent DELES international pandemic impact survey found significant reductions in students’ perceptions of their learning environment when abruptly shifted to online education.

The DELES is an important tool for any distance education program, and it profiles key aspects of the digital classroom:
  • Instructor Support - Understand how approachable and amenable the online instructor is to students
  • Student Interaction and Collaboration - Identify what opportunities students have to interact with each other and collaboratively learn
  • Personal Relevance - Learn about the connections between students’ out-of-class and online classroom experiences
  • Authentic Learning - Gauge the extent to which students can engage with real-world problems
  • Active Learning - Assess students’ opportunity to take an active role in their educational growth
  • Student Autonomy - Ascertain if students have the option to initiate their own ideas and make their own learning decisions
  • Enjoyment - Measure student enjoyment and satisfaction with the learning environment; results can be correlated with the six psychosocial scales above

Mind Garden, Inc. is committed to helping educational organizations understand the impact of the shift to new classroom modalities. The DELES offers online delivery and real-time reporting to quickly provide leaders with a view into the digital classroom, the impact and opportunities of their online educational offerings.

Mind Garden, Inc.
Mind Garden has been an important resource for psychological assessments since 1994. Mind Garden provides valuable tools for research and to facilitate positive personal and organizational transformation.