Students’ motives for attending e-learning master’s degree courses

Abstract

This paper presents the results of a research study on the motives of students to study in the distance learning form at the University of Humanities and Economics in Lodz. The research was carried out using the method of semistructured interviews. The interviews were conducted among students of the first year of the follow-up Master’s degree in Pedagogy. The research was carried out in the years 2016–2019, in this period three stages of research were realised. The research group consisted of 20 students who had work and family responsibilities and were between 35 and 48 years old. In addition, respondents already had previous experience in combined and full-time studies. The interviews were recorded on a mobile phone and lasted about 40 minutes each. Data were analysed using open coding procedures. The goal of open coding was to thematically divide the analysed text. The analysed interviews were divided into units, which sometimes meant words, and sometimes sentences or paragraphs set according to their meaning, so the unit consisted of a semantic unit. A code has been assigned to each specified unit. Once the code list was created, we started to categorise data