Topic 9

Learner Support Systems

 Contents 

Overview

Source materials for this topic

Types of learner support

            Tuition and counselling

            Ways of providing support

            Support personnel

            Support structures

Functions of learner support

Tasks involved in tuition

Tasks involved in counselling

Qualities required of support personnel

Implications for course design

Administrative support

Counselling support

Tutorial support

Peer support

Learner support checklist

Practice exercise

            Designing for learner support

 1. Overview 

These materials support a discussion on the topic of the kinds and mechanisms of support with which learners are provided.

1.1 Source materials for this topic

The Commonwealth of Learning. Perspectives on distance education: student support services. Vancouver: col, 1992.

Evans, T. Understanding learners in open and distance education. London: Kogan Page, 1994.

Lewis, R. Tutoring in open learning. Lancaster: Framework Press, 1995.

Mills, R., and A. Tait. Supporting the learner in open and distance learning. London: Pitman, 1996.

Rowntree, D. Preparing materials for open, distance, and flexible learning. London: Kogan Page, 1994.

 2. Types of learner support 

2.1 Tuition and counselling

Distance educators should offer two kinds of support to learners:

·       academic support, or tuition; and

·       organisational and emotional support, or counselling.

2.2 Ways of providing support

Support can be provided in a variety of ways:

·       face-to-face, at study centres, residential weekends, and summer schools;

·       by telephone;

·       by e-mail and computer conference;

·       by fax and post; and

·       by audio conference, audio cassette, or video conference.

Discussion: Your participants may have examples to provide of types and means of support to add to this list. Each of the case studies included in this pack provides information on the ways in which the institutions featured support their learners.

2.3 Support personnel

In addition, a number of kinds of personnel offer this support:

·       part-time tutors;

·       full-time academic staff;

·       counsellors and advisers;

·       learning skills specialists;

·       administrative staff;

·       staff of collaborating institutions;

·       other learners; and

·       friends and family.

Discussion: What kinds of support personnel are available in the programmes in which your participants are involved?

2.4 Support structures

Finally, the characteristics of any given programme’s support for learners could be plotted along a number of axes, as in the following table.

Characteristics of support structures

Local support from regional or sub-regional centres	«	Distant support, probably from institutional headquarters
Group support	«	Individual support
Non-specialised in terms of course and needs	«	Specialised in terms of course and needs
Face-to-face as well as distance media	«	Distance media only
Continuity as learner progresses	«	Discontinuity from course to course
High cost	«	Low cost

These axes are not independent of each other:

·     local support is unlikely to be specialised in terms of either course or needs whereas distant support could be specialised in both course or needs;

·     the greater the degree of specialisation in support, the less likely that support will be continuous as learners move through various courses toward their final goal; and

·     institutions devise support systems that both reflect their particular situation and attempt to get the best of all possible worlds by compromises such as the use of local part-time staff.

Discussion: You might wish to ask your participants to plot the support structures that characterise their programmes along these axes.

 Advantages of open and distance learning 

3. Functions of learner support

Regardless of how an institution chooses to organise their learner support services, the two basic functions of learner support apply: tuition and counselling. Both can be broken down further into a number of tasks.

Discussion: Have participants provide examples from their experience of the functions and tasks relating to tuition and counselling, as discussed below.

3.1 Tasks involved in tuition

Those who provide intellectual support to distance learners do so in the understanding that it is the materials that are intended to ‘teach’. Their primary task is to facilitate the learning of those materials.

However, teaching and learning are social processes that arise from and are embedded in social structures and systems of values. For this reason no set of materials, no matter how carefully designed, can effectively teach every learner equally successfully.

This generates a number of tasks for those who are providing intellectual support:

·         explaining to the learner; for example, clarifying a concept or an instruction;

·         exploring issues with the learner; for example, how the course material applies to the learner’s own situation and experience; and

·         feedback to the learner; for example, commenting on and grading assignments.

3.2 Tasks involved in counselling

Personal and emotional support is as essential to the learning process as intellectual support.

The tasks involved for these staff include:

·         giving the learner information; for example, about fees, or the availability of courses;

·         giving the learner advice; for example, about appropriate course choice, time management, and study skills;

·         exploring an issue with the learner; for example, helping potential learners set their goals;

·         taking action to help a learner; for example, arranging transport for a disabled learner; and

·         advocacy on behalf of a learner; for example, giving a reference or waiving an institutional rule.

 3.3 Qualities required of support personnel

The tasks involved in counselling suggest that distance educators might need the following qualities to succeed in their work of supporting learners:

·         warmth: the quality in a person that communicates welcome, respect, comfort, and willingness to give time to another;

·         genuineness: meaning honesty and openness about one’s own powers and failings;

·         acceptance: being able to accept another person for what they are, as someone worthy of respect;

·         empathy: sensing the hurt or pleasure of another as they sense it;

·         organisational skills: the ability to manage time well, and to diagnose problems and take appropriate action to solve them;

·         explicatory skills: the ability to break a problem into its component parts and help the learner see how they fit back together; and

·         listening skills: the ability to give one’s entire attention to another and to respond in ways that do not judge but demonstrate you understand what has been said.

 4. Implications for course design 

What significance do these dimensions of the learner support system have for the design of learning materials?

These implications can be discussed in terms of the following categories:

·       administrative support;

·       counselling support;

·       tutorial support; and

·       peer support.

Discussion: It would be useful to have some sample materials available for demonstrating ways in which learner support functions are acknowledged and integrated.

4.1 Administrative support

In order to learn effectively, learners need to have four kinds of support which administrative systems provide:

·         the dispatch of course materials in complete and timely fashion;

·         administrative information:

cost of the course and when fees are to be paid;

when the course begins and ends;

who the tutor is, and how to contact him or her;

who to contact when things go wrong;

who to contact for certain kinds of information and services; for example, library;

when and where course tutorials take place;

when and how assignments are to be submitted; and

when and where examinations are scheduled;

·         timely assignment turnaround;

·         the dispatch of the right examination to the right location at the right time; and

·         accurate and complete records keeping.

Much of this administrative information can be readily included in the course materials, if not in the study guide, then in another publication such as a learner handbook.

A learner handbook needs to be designed with the same level of care and instructional clarity as the other learning materials. Accurate written information provided at the beginning of a course can prevent a great number of problems later on.

A number of media can be pressed into service to provide some of this information. For example:

·      letters: tutors and learners can exchange letters;

·      radio: tutors can introduce themselves to their learners on radio programmes, and learners can phone into ‘chat’ shows with questions;

·      audio cassettes: tutors can use these for introducing themselves;

·      video cassettes: can show distance learners the building to which they send their queries and some of the key staff with whom they will be dealing;

·      e-mail: learners can e-mail their queries to administrative staff for responses that are independent of time zones, unlike the telephone, and faster than the post;

·      Web sites: a growing number of institutions have Web sites on which they post up-to-date information on courses, programmes, fees, and staff. In some cases a Web site may also provide access to the institution’s library catalogue; and

·      face-to-face: still probably the most important medium of contact between learners and institutions around the world, by means of access or learning centres where learners can go for information, advice, and assistance.

4.2 Counselling support

As with administrative support, a great deal of counselling material can be made available in print or other media. For example, a variety of booklets can be prepared on common problems faced by learners, including:

·         making sure distance study is right for you;

·         how to choose the course that is right for you;

·         how to apply for a course;

·         financial assistance and how to apply for it;

·         coping successfully with unfamiliar technologies;

·         how to write essays;

·         study skills;

·         time management;

·         how to revise for examinations;

·         strategies for overcoming exam anxiety; and

·         planning for a new career.

Many of these booklets have already been produced (for example, by the United Kingdom Open University) and are sufficiently generic to be applicable to a number of institutions beyond the institution that produced them, or could be readily adapted to suit your particular circumstances.

Again, technologies other than print can be used creatively to provide this support. For example,

·       audio cassettes: audio cassettes can be used to engage learners in a dialogue about some common problem, its diagnosis, and possible solutions;

·       video cassettes: some institutions have produced video cassettes of learners talking about their experiences as learners, to let other learners know they are not the only ones who have a particular problem;

·       computer conferences: computer conferences, both staff- and learner-led, can provide timely and personalised help; in addition, non-participating members of the conferences who read but do not post messages can also benefit from the discussions; and

·       telephone counselling: the telephone can be a very intimate and personalised medium for discussion of personal problems.

4.3 Tutorial support

Tutors typically have to deal with administrative issues, and also counsel learners. Roles of educators, and especially distance educators, tend to overlap.

In terms of providing intellectual support and facilitating learners’ learning, however, it is essential in the learning materials themselves to both provide and to prompt access to this support. For example,

·       tutor contact: learners need to be prompted in the learning materials to contact their tutor, by whatever means is made available, at frequent intervals, to discuss a particular issue, for example, to plan for a major assignment, to discuss a returned assignment. Icons are useful here; for example, a telephone for telephone contact, or a stamped envelope for correspondence;

·       assignment dispatch and grading: learners need clear, complete, and accurate information about when and how to submit an assignment, what to submit, where to send it, and how long they can expect to wait before it is returned. Research indicates that ‘turnaround’ times of two weeks or less have an optimal effect on learner motivation to continue, as does the requirement for submitting an assignment early in the course. Most learners who get over this first hurdle will end up completing the course;

·       grading criteria: in the learning materials, learners need to be told the criteria by which their assignment will be graded, which aspects of their answer will receive particular emphasis. In turn, the tutors who grade assignments must be explicit in grading according to these guidelines, and provide comments and reasons for their grade that display all the characteristics of effective support: warmth, honesty, empathy, organisation, explication, and the written equivalent of ‘listening’. Acceptance is a little more difficult, since the tutor is in this case required to judge performance, but even so such judgments can be communicated in constructive and helpful fashion; and

·       examinations: the learning materials must also provide clear, complete, and accurate information on when and where learners will be sitting examinations; what kind of examinations these will be: multiple choice, short answer, or essay; what material the examinations will cover; and what the examination grade will contribute to the overall grade for the course.

4.4 Peer support

Learning materials can also point learners toward others in their communities and social networks who can help them — co-workers, friends, family members, and community members.

Some institutions, for example, publish lists of learners and which courses they are taking, along with their telephone numbers, e-mail addresses, and postal addresses. It is essential to obtain the permission of any individual before publishing this kind of information about them, however, since these data are frequently protected by privacy legislation.

Tutorials that involve other learners (for example, at study centres, by audio conference, or by computer conference) can be used as much for purposes of providing peer support as providing intellectual and other kinds of support from the tutor.

Learning materials can even require learners to seek out other learners, to work as a team on a particular assignment, for example.

Learners may also be required to find someone from their immediate social network to interview, for example, or to seek information from in some other way.

 5. Learner support checklist

When you have completed your learning design, ask yourself the questions in the following learner support checklist to ensure that you have taken adequate account of learner support issues.

Learner Support Checklist

q       Have you used what you know of learners (see Topic 4 (Target Audience) of this kit) to plan what kinds of individual help and support they might need?

q       Have you identified people who will provide this help and support?

q       Have you defined the roles these people will play?

q       Have you identified any support roles for learners themselves; for example, in supporting each other in self-help groups or in carrying out group activities?

q       Have you cued your learners in the materials to sources of help at points at which you think they might need it?

q       Have you provided clear and complete instructions in the materials for who learners may contact for help, when, and how?

 6. Practice exercise 

6.1 Designing for learner support

Instructions:

·      Divide participants into several small working groups, no more than five to a group.

·      Give each group a sample unit from a course that is relevant to their circumstances and interests.

·      Ask your small groups to try to:

determine from the sample units they have been given what kinds of support are provided to learners by the institution that produced the units; and

to assess as far as possible whether that level and kind of support is likely to meet learners’ needs.

·      Ask each group to be prepared to report their findings to the group as a whole.

Timeframe: Approximately one hour, including report back and discussion.

Materials: Sample units.