As the profile of the distance-education student changes, new problems and difficulties are arising which must be addressed if the courses are to succeed
Tamar Kahn
A TAXI-DRIVER from KaNyamazane, a shopkeeper from Cape Town and a teacher from Tzaneen might not appear to have much in common.
But over the years, hundreds of thousands of people from equally disparate walks of life have enrolled with distance education institutions and private colleges throughout the country to satisfy their need for knowledge.
In 1996, almost 240 000 students were registered with universities and private colleges as distance learners. More than 130 000 teachers were involved in teacher education at a distance and more than 180 000 were enrolled at private distance colleges.
Although the majority of distance learners are teachers or nurses looking to upgrade their skills by taking a diploma, many students enrol to study for a degree in the humanities, such as law, and a tiny percentage study technical or scientific subjects.
”Distance education has enormous potential, particularly as more and more people are finding that they have to study throughout their lives,” says Jennifer Glennie, director of the South African Institute for Distance Education (Saide).
”It is not only an economic imperative but also a political imperative. There are hundreds of thousands of adults who were denied an opportunity for higher education in the past. This is one way that a talented 30-year-old or 40-year-old can achieve his or her potential.”
With such huge numbers of people studying from home, are they getting their money’s worth? Recent government policy documents have emphasised the importance of distance- education methods in solving South Africa’s education problems.
However, research suggests that the quality of distance-education practices leaves much to be desired. Saide published a report in 1995 concluding that: ”Taken as a whole, distance education’s contribution to the priorities of education and training … is variously marginal, inefficient and … dysfunctional.”
Only 10% to 15% of students ever complete a degree, and those who do finish their studies take, on average, nine years to do so. For example, at the University of South Africa (Unisa), the country’s oldest and largest correspondence university, less than 5% of the students enrolled on a BSc course in 1984 had graduated by 1992.
One of the reasons for the low number of students completing their distance- education courses is poor course design. The content-driven, transmission-education flavour that characterises so much of South African education, in which the teacher is the fount of all knowledge rather than the facilitator of learning, is even stronger in distance education.
”There is very little concept development and very little interaction with the learners takes place,” says Glennie. ”The vast majority of courses – and there are some notable exceptions – are developed by a lone academic writing slightly elaborated lecture notes. Seldom is the material developmentally tested with the learners.”
The other major pitfall is lack of student support. ”Students are often not counselled, not given academic tutoring and, in many cases, do not get sufficient help with assignments. The turnaround time for assignments to be marked is terribly slow, and students are rarely told where they are going wrong or how they might improve.”
During the past 10 years, the student profile has changed considerably, from predominantly white to predominantly black. At the same time, a new group has emerged – that of full-time distance learners. Traditionally, the typical distance- education tertiary student was aged 30 to 40, but these new full-time students are young – between 18 and 25 years of age. These younger students pose new challenges for institutions. ”The support they require goes beyond their academic needs; many of them desperately need a quiet place to study,” says Thandiwe Ngengebule, the head of student support at Unisa.
”Without the benefit of peers or teachers, students must grapple with their difficulties alone. Most students are from historically disadvantaged groups and are studying in a language other than their mother tongue, so they are faced with both content and language difficulties.”
Ngengebule stresses that Unisa is well aware of the needs of the distance learner. Her department has established regional learning centres throughout the country and is currently running a pilot project to investigate the viability of running tutorials for students at these centres. These tutorials last an hour and give groups of students the opportunity to address questions to a qualified tutor.
The need for many distance learners to receive support from other students and lecturers has spawned an industry, exemplified by one of the oldest and probably most successful – Midrand Campus. Unisa students can enrol at Midrand full- time for the sort of support they’d be getting at a residential university – they attend lectures and tutorials, study in the library, take tests on site. Established eight years ago, it has spread to a second location, with a third campus – a business school – offering support for postgraduate qualifications. Other institutions, set up on similar lines, have followed.
One of the great attractions of distance education for students is that it appears to cost less than attending a contact university. But, according to Glennie, the institutions actually spend very little money on the students. ”In some cases institutions receive more money than they spend on students,” she says. And as for the institutions themselves, one of the more insidious attractions of distance learners may be that they are an effective way to boost their numbers of students from disadvantaged backgrounds without having them clutter up their campuses.
And so what do the students get? In the absence of any national quality controls, students may be victim to courses which provide education of a dubious standard.
”At the moment, the whole notion of quality assurance which has developed in other countries has not really impacted yet,” says Glennie. ”There are attempts to define a framework for quality assurance [the Department of Education has appointed a research group to investigate this], but it is still unclear how these will be implemented and enforced.”
Technikon SA’s Gerard Grobler would like to see course material set nationally, ”in order to engage expertise nationally. Currently each institution re-invents the wheel, and quality suffers.”
He would also like to see collaboration among institutions: ”There’s a window of opportunity at the moment to establish a very efficient and flexible learning system, as opposed to a fragmented and costly collection of flexible learning institutions.” Duplication could be eliminated if colleges, universities and technikons got together and decided who would offer what.
Distance educators fill a crucial role. He believes distance education to be ”the only way you can properly address the question of mass higher education”.
And students who complete their distance- education courses appear to improve their career prospects, regardless, it seems, of the content of the degree or diploma.
”Many employers value the kinds of attributes a student with a degree will bring to the workplace,” says Glennie. ”Take teachers as an example. If they complete accredited courses, they receive salary increments for their achievements, even if we at Saide don’t necessarily think they are better teachers.”
Saide, 1995, Open Learning and Distance Education in South Africa: Report of an International Commission, January to April 1994, Macmillan