grips with distance learning in SA
Mail & Guardian Reporter
IT takes a special sort of student to survive the rigours of distance learning. There’s no spoon-feeding here, no personal support: one survives or fails on one’s own.
“For most of us, distance learning is an adjunct, a supplement, to what we get face to face,” says Jonathan Cook, director of the management development unit at the University of the Witwatersrand Business School.
“Distance learning is appropriate for some purposes – where you are looking at principally factual material, focusing on knowledege, as against skills. One wouldn’t go by choice to distance learning for interpersonal skills, whereas you might benefit from studying the principles of accounting by distance learning.”
The material itself could pose a problem if it is supplied by an overseas institution. “The learner should check whether the subject can be dealt with relatively context-free,” he says. “How much will the learner be prepared to give up the South African flavour of the material he is learning from?”
A distance learner must be good at self- discipline. And, says Cook, “people who are more extrovert often need input; their energy requires contact with people. They need to put themselves under the discipline of a face-to-face course.”
However, a person who is more of an introvert, who derives his or her energy from within, might do very well as a distance learner.
There is another important distinction – the medium.
“Those who relate well to written material can benefit from distance learning. Others may relate better to oral-presented material. They should be in a classroom or a study group.”
The addition of audio or video tapes will help. But, “the good distance learning institution will ensure you are placed in a study group and work together with other students on the course”.
Adds a Western Cape academic involved in distance-learning programmes: “You need self-discipline. You can’t procrastinate; you should do your tasks as they come in. And you should keep in close contact with the department. That’s crucial.
“As soon as you have a question, don’t hesitate, write it down and then communicate with your department. You can phone or write or fax or, depending on the department, you can e-mail if you’ve got the facility.”
Contacting the university where the student is registered is not a worry if it’s only a query that needs an answer. But the post office’s problems can change the simple task of turning in an assignment into a mission. So another quality is necessary for the distance learner: tenacity.
More and more, students are less likely to trust their assignments to ordinary post and more likely to opt for special – rather pricier – packages offered by the post office. There are also other options, depending on whether the university will accept assignments in any form other than the traditional: faxes are sometimes acceptable, e-mails less so.
This year’s excellent Student’s Guide to Distance Education in South Africa, compiled by the Human Sciences Research Council, includes a number of checklists on distance learning. Among them: a list of demands this mode of education places on the learner.
For each of the demands listed below, the student should note either “I can handle this” or “I will need help in handling this”:
* Planning what and when I am going to study in the days and weeks ahead.
* Concentrating for long periods of time.
* Studying on my own with little or no help from a “live” tutor.
* Reading books and articles in order to learn from them.
* Summarising and commenting on various specialists’ ideas.
* Using graphs, tables, simple statistics and so forth.
* Learning from video or audio tapes.
* Planning and writing essays and other assignments.
* Responding to a tutor’s comments on my essays/assignments.
* Asking a tutor for help with something I find difficult.
* Travelling to contact sessions at learning centres.
* Participating in face-to-face discussions with other students.
* Applying what I am learning to my work or in the community.
* Carrying out independent research with little guidance.
If most of the demands elicit a “I will need help in handling this” response, the guide suggests the student talk to a counsellor at the institution where he or she intends registering.
If you want to judge the course you’re taking – whether it’s suitable for your purposes, for example, or supplies sufficient support – the book also includes checklists to match the course against. They are all derived from Ensuring Quality in Open Learning: A Handbook for Action, published by Britain’s Manpower Services Commission
— Student’s Guide to Distance Education in South Africa, A Southern Directories Yearbook,(R49,95) is available from the HSRC at PO Box 5556, Pretoria 0001, or telephone (012) 302-2912