The Contributions of Open and Distance Learning (ODL) Towards Job Performance of Veterinary Practitioners

An analytical study was conducted on Open and Distance Learning (ODL) programmes by veterinary university, Chennai for veterinary practitioners in Erode, Salem and Coimbatore districts of Tamil Nadu, India. Field veterinarians working in the public dispensaries / hospitals formed the sample for the study. The data was collected by mailing questionnaires to the respondents. The study revealed that the ODL courses effectively enhanced the job performance of the veterinarians in the areas of diagnosis (57.14 per cent) followed by medical treatment (49.86 per cent) at a frequency ranging from often to most often. Threefourths (75.00 per cent) of the participants and non-participants (87.50 per cent) had medium to high level of job performance. The „Z‟ test was statistically nonsignificant for job performance between the participants and the non-participants. Among the 14 independent variables, access to computer and training exposure was found to have a highly significant relationship with job performance in case of participants while all other variables were non-significant. The results would help the ODL developers to improve the contents and facilitate better delivery of distance education courses, so as to enhance the job performance of the veterinarians.


Introduction
Education is a means for improving the quality of the human resources.These resources are enhanced by imparting knowledge, understanding, attitude and skills.Literacy rate is one of the three components which determine the Human Development Index (HDI) of any nation (UNDP, 2005 1 ).The literacy rate in developed countries is about 95.00 per cent.But India, that ranked 128 th among 174 countries in the world in the Human Development Index (HDI), had a literacy rate of only 65.40 per cent (Kishore, 2003 2 ).
A developing country like India with its limited resources is constrained with the establishment of a number of formal educational institutions to meet the ever-increasing demand.The growing population of a country demands a system of education which brings the learning to the doorsteps of the learner.As a result, the major percentage of population living in remote areas, working in the offices and involved in business and agriculture get benefited.Hence, distance education programmes are thought as an alternative source of educational needs.
As a valid, widely accepted and practical means of study, distance education embraces many positive characteristics, which makes education more and more open to all.
Distance education caters to the needs of: 1. students located in geographically remote areas 2. students who had discontinued their formal education owing to various circumstances 3. students who like to update / refresh their knowledge to present in an existing discipline or in a new area (Sahoo and Bhatt, 1996 3  From the list of non-participants a sample size of 40, equivalent to that of experimental group for the study were selected by simple random technique to form the control group.
An attempt was therefore made to analyze the ODL programme in order to evaluate and improve the quality of the course to benefit the future learners with the following objectives.
1. To understand the general perception of the participants towards the usefulness of distance education course towards their job performance.2. To find out the level of job performance among the beneficiaries of the ODL course.
3. To work out the relationship between the profile and job performance of the respondents.

Methodology
The design frame consisted of one experimental and one control group.Out of the 120 veterinary practitioners who had enrolled in ODL course on "Recent Trends in disease diagnosis and treatment of ruminants", 40 of them who responded to the questionnaire formed the experimental group.Among the non-participants of the ODL programme, 40 veterinary practitioners working under similar conditions formed the control group for the study.The respondents were from Erode, Salem and Coimbatore districts of Tamil Nadu, India.The data were collected using a well structured and pre-tested questionnaire.The score obtained by the individual for each item was summed up to arrive at the total score.The maximum and minimum score one could obtain ranged between 152 and zero.The test was administered among participants and non-participants to assess the difference in job performance due to their learning in distance course contents and also to find out the perception of participants towards the distance course contents in terms of job performance.On the basis of the total score obtained, the respondents were classified into low, medium and high groups based on mean and standard deviation for the purpose of interpretation of results.The relationship with 14 independent variables taken up for the study based on judges" opinion was worked out by making use of the mean score.The scores for each course content for job performance was worked out and divided by the number of respondents to arrive at the mean score of the content.
The test was administered among the experimental group who had completed the ODL programme and also among the control group to assess the difference in the job performance.
The data was also subjected to "Z" test to know the test of significance.

General perception of participants towards the effectiveness of ODL on job performance
Perception of participants of the ODL programme towards the effectiveness of distance education course on job performance was analyzed based on the mean score and is presented below in Table 1.
Table 1 indicates the perception of the participants towards their job performance.The participants perceived that the ODL course effectively enhanced their job performance on the areas of disease diagnosis (57.14 per cent), medical treatment (49.86 per cent), surgical treatment (37.50 per cent) and post-mortem examination (40.25 per cent) at a frequency ranging from often to most often.On an overall analysis of the participant"s perception towards the job performance, it could be concluded that the participants were performing their job roles ranging from most often to often which they had learnt through the ODL course.This might be due to the fact that ODL programme provided an opportunity to enhance their job performance and the course content was closely related to their job chart.It is seen from the Table 4 that out of 14 independent variables, only two variables namely training exposure and access to computer had highly significant positive relationship with job performance of participants.The remaining 12 variables showed non-significant relationship with job performance of participants.Among non-participants, all the 14 independent variables had positive non-significant relationship with job performance.The significant positive relationship of training exposure and access to computer with job performance might be due to the fact that more the number of trainings undergone by the veterinary practitioners and more the usage of modern technology mediated learning, higher will be the ratio of takes for latest technical know-how and better would be their application of professional skill in the field level.This is in line with Daniels (2005 5 ) where he stated that conventional means alone are unable to meet the challenge.ODL, coupled with the application of appropriate information and communication technologies, can play a central role in delivering quality education.Similar positive relationship with job performance was observed by Reddy (1982 6 ).

Distribution of respondents according to their job performance
The list of practicing veterinarians who have not enrolled in the ODL programme and who belonged to the three districts of Tamil Nadu namely Erode, Salem and Coimbatore were prepared in consultation with the Joint Directors of the respective districts.
).The Tamil Nadu Veterinary and Animal Sciences University (TANUVAS) had launched two Open and Distance Learning (ODL) programmes in collaboration with Common Wealth of Learning (COL) in December 2003 to benefit the practicing veterinarians of the State.The courses were expected to deliver inputs which would help in enhancing the knowledge and skill of the learners.This would reflect on their job performance.Since delivery of such course on distance education mode was a pioneering effort to update the knowledge and skill The job performance in the present study referred to the level of success achieved by an individual as a result of his efforts in performing his / her duties in veterinary dispensaries / hospitals.It was measured by the scale developed by Sasidhar et al.(2002 4).The scale consisted of 38 statements which were included in the study under four major headings.The response for each statement was measured using a five point continuum scale as detailed below.