Demographic characteristics of sugarcane technology learners through distance learning

Education is the process of acquiring behavioural changes in knowledge, skill and attitude through one's own self-activity. The quality with value of education depends on learners need, subject matter, total number of learners, allocation of time, time use efficiency, method of teaching, use of instructional materials, content clarity and credibility of the content. The Tamil Nadu Agricultural University concentrates its efforts on distance education through directorate of open and distance learning. The study was conducted on the respondents who had done diploma in sugarcane cultivation technology through distance learning mode from the university. It was found that majority (86.67%) of the respondents were old to middle aged, ninety per cent were collegiate and one-tenth (10.00%) had acquired diploma, most of the respondents were in cooperative sector (41.66%), majority (75.00%) had experience of more than 10 years in service, one fourth (25.00%) of the respondents resided at a distance of 201–300 kms, 68.33 per cent belonged to rural areas, majority had medium level of information seeking (68.33%) and information sharing (80.00%) behavior and majority of the respondents (58.33%) had medium level of job satisfaction.