Online Student Services and Faculty Development

Online Student Services and Faculty Development
Student support and faculty development for online learners and instructors comes in many forms. On this web site you will find research, articles and links to resources for student support services and faculty development.

Thursday, May 08, 2003

Editorial: Reflections on Student Support in Open and Distance Learning by Alan Tait

What then are the main reasons for having student support integrated in an ODL system?

Students want support

The first of these is that students want it. While this might be said to be pedagogically weak in the theoretical sense, it is important for the best of reasons. The first is that students are more and more in a position of being able to choose with whom they study: thus competition makes it imperative that institutions can offer what students say they want.

The reduction of drop-out

Student support, especially student guidance and counselling, tutor support, and effective information and administrative systems all provide a range of activity that impacts not only in terms of teaching but also affectively, that is to say reinforcing the student sense of confidence, self-esteem and progress. Further, intervention when students have not contributed work on time can make a timely and effective contribution to the reduction of drop-out.

The nature of learning

A further mode of explanation for student support, especially for tutoring in group work in study centres or online and in the teaching given through the return of assignments, lies in the impact this makes on the learning process. Essentially this has been termed ‘mediation,’ that is the role that the tutor performs in relating the teaching content to the student as an individual in her or his situation, including the social, economic, geographic and cultural dimensions. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning SS

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