One of the more interesting characteristics of newer and smaller campuses can be that their students perform better on average than their main-campus counterparts in the same subjects or units, with the same assessment and common marking. For the most part we think we understand the problems of these distant students, their pressures, their drop-out rates and their good achievements when they persist. We support them in their unavoidable or self- inflicted remoteness, be they in Antarctica or Singapore or Cunnamulla or downtown Sydney. Where we provide printed materials, we try to make them attractive, comprehensive, self-sufficient, accurate and reliable, and above all understandable. We take great care with instructional design.
Similar requirements apply to online materials.
We provide opportunities for interaction the telephone tutorials, the tutor help line, the online chat sessions, the email enquiries and so on. A distinct group of remote students are those studying overseas with agency support. The distance or online students now have such a range of interactive options that they should no longer have any reason to see themselves as the poor relations in higher education. This has given some clues as to how satellite campus teaching and learning can be improved. Universities can do more in rural campuses than give an attenuated experience of main campus teaching these attenuated experiences include the lecture recorded on video, the videoconference, the audiotaped classes, the provision of a lecturer to take first year classes strictly in accord with how it would be done on the main campus.