From: anderson@acs.ucalgary.ca (Terry Anderson)
Subject: Opening Comments - Student Support
Originator: bansup-m@udevdiv.unibase.sk.ca
Reply-To: <bansup-m@udevdiv.unibase.sk.ca>
Organization: Unibase Telecom Ltd.
Date: Sun, 15 Nov 1992 22:33:26 GMT


Subject: Introduction to Student Support Issues

              STUDENT SUPPORT SYSTEMS IN DISTANCE EDUCATION


Although the elements of course production in Distance Education systems can
vary quite considerably with audio and video elements being added to the basic
printed materials which are common to most systems, it is possible, to a large
extent, to assume a generic similarity for course production across the whole
range of Distance Education while the same can never be true for student
support systems which may or may not embrace:

                  Class teaching at study centres

                  Individual tutorials at study centres or other locations

                  Annual residential schools

                  Study or self help groups

                  Social events

                  Counselling sessions at study centres

                  Correspondence with tutors and counsellors

                  Telephone contact with tutors and counsellors

                  Group telephone tutorials

                  Radio tutorials

                  "Correspondence" using audio cassettes

                  Computer mediated communication

                  Student newspapers

Nor does this list cover the entire range of student support systems presently
in operation.  What it does do is serve to demonstrate that there is an almost
infinite variety in student support systems and this arises because all
student support systems attempt to translate the course production activities
into the environment of the student, an environment which differs in
accordance with cultural and socio-economic factors as well as factors of
geography and the possibilities or limitations of various different types of
communication in the locality of the student.  

Distance Education exists at primary, secondary and tertiary level but it is
only in the last two decades that we have seen the appearance of large scale
Distance Education systems of post-secondary education and it is these systems
which have turned to the theory and practice of service industry for their
developments.  

The objective of student support services is normally construed as the
individualising of the academic offering to the student and it is often the
case that those involved in student support services are identified as
intermediaries between the course production elements and the students
themselves, a situation which can be fraught with misunderstandings for all
concerned.  The move in this century from very limited higher education to
mass traditional higher education saw a separation of the traditional elements
in the original one-to-one teaching system but these elements have not become
entirely discrete, not least because they happen to be performed in a single
limited geographical area.  In Distance Education, however, the independence
of time and space leads more readily to a division into discrete elements. 
The overall design of a distance education system is therefore of paramount
importance.  If the discrete elements of the process do not fit together as
a coherent whole from the standpoint of the student, the objective cannot be
achieved.  More and more it is being said that higher education should take
cognisance of what students want to learn and how they want to learn as
opposed to what academics want to teach and how they want to teach it.  The
challenge for distance education for the future lies not in the area of course
production but in the area of student support services, the mediation role.

David Sewart



Newsgroups: alt.education.bangkok.cmc