Zambia
The University of Zambia
Prepared by:
Richard Siaciwena
Brief description of the programme
The University of Zambia is a conventional university that has been operating a comparatively small scale distance education programme since it was established in 1966. Distance student enrolments vary from year to year. In the 1995–96 academic year, for example, 381 distance students (326 male and 55 female) were enrolled, constituting 9.8 percent of the total university enrolment of 3,980 (that is, full-time, part-time, and distance studies).
There are 68 first- and second-year level semester courses offered to distance students by the schools (faculties) of Education, Humanities and Social Sciences, and Natural Sciences. These lead to the award of the Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor of Arts with Education, and the Diploma in Adult Education. However, students who enrol for the Bachelor of Arts and the Bachelor of Arts with Education degree programmes must transfer to full-time study for their final two years. The Diploma in Adult Education can be completed entirely by distance education.
Problems encountered
Planning and managing distance education
In the past the distance education programme has suffered from the lack of a clear and comprehensive policy, inadequate funding, and long bureaucratic procedures through which matters relating to distance education are referred to the university’s policy- and decision-making bodies. An additional problem is that the Directorate of Distance Education does not always find it easy to establish its authority over the overworked teaching staff, who are inclined to regard requests and instructions from the directorate as carrying less weight than those given by their teaching departments relating to internal teaching.
Implementing quality assurance
There is neither a policy nor mechanisms or strategies for implementing or assessing quality in distance education, a phenomenon that has made distance education more variable in quality than should be the case. In the past, this has been compounded by the lack of trained staff (in distance education) and the difficulty in retraining teaching staff so that they become more proficient in distance teaching.
Using and integrating media in distance education
Print materials are the predominant medium of instruction complemented by a four-week intensive face-to-face teaching programme. The comparatively under-developed telecommunications technologies make it difficult to use and integrate other media in distance education, resulting in a weak two-way communication system.
Instructional design and production for distance education
There is no uniform policy or practice on instructional design or course presentation and there is very little input into course design from experts and professionals in the Directorate of Distance Education. The course production capacity of the Directorate of Distance Education is very limited and, therefore, it is not capable of supporting and facilitating efficient production and speedy delivery of study materials to the learners.
Learner support systems
Some of the support services offered by different departments and units are not fully integrated into the distance education system as a whole and the Directorate of Distance Education can exercise no sanction for any failure on the part of various providers to offer efficient support services to distance learners. Most of the support services are centralised and the comparatively under-developed telecommunications infrastructure limits the range of learner-support services and the media through which they are provided.
The most important issue: Planning and managing distance education
Some policy and organisational changes instituted in the 1990s have helped to minimise a number of problems that, over the years, have affected the planning and management of the distance education programme.
Unlike the report on the establishment of a university in Zambia which provided broad aims, the University of Zambia’s Strategic Plan: 1994–98 offers more specific and more comprehensive policy provisions for the development of distance education.
Distance education, once part of the Centre for Continuing Education, was transformed into an autonomous Directorate of Distance Education in 1994. Its director, like deans of schools and faculties, is accountable to the Vice-Chancellor, and is a member of the Senate and its various committees. A Senate Committee on Distance Education, chaired by the Deputy Vice-Chancellor, was established as part of the new structure of distance education. Its main functions are to consider and formulate policy on distance education and recommend to the Senate, rules and regulations governing the distance education programme.
Solutions
These changes have not only improved the decision-making process but have also enhanced the status and visibility of distance education in the university.
Distance teaching staff are now paid allowances for: all work on study materials prepared; every hour of lectures and tutorials during the residential school; and for each assignment and examination script marked. Although the current levels of allowances are not commensurate with the distance teaching responsibilities of the affected staff, they have had, in general, a positive effect on the running of the distance education programme.
It has been realised that it is important and necessary for the Director of Distance Education and staff to meet regularly with distance education staff. Unlike Boards of Studies meetings (which also discuss matters relating to distance teaching) meetings with the distance teaching staff are more focused. Decisions or recommendations from these meetings can be referred direct to the Senate or to the Senate Committee on Distance Education.
Perhaps one important lesson to be learned from the experience of the University of Zambia is that, in a dual mode university, the administrative and financial autonomy as well as various incentives for teaching staff are crucially important. A lot more has yet to be done in these areas at the University of Zambia.
