INTRODUCTION

This tutor's guide is extremely relevant to all tutors, course writers, and course evaluators working in the field of distance education who want to help their learners to become independent and to achieve success. Tutors can benefit from the content presented in the guide, as well as from the teaching approach, which encourages tutors to think for themselves and relates learning activities to tutors' own experiences.

Support conceived in a very broad sense

Support of distance learners is conceived in a very broad sense in this guide, and this is reflected in the four main areas covered in the guide. Each area is dealt with as a separate unit. These areas are:
• Open learning and adult learners - Unit 1
• Planning, facilitating and evaluating individual and group tutorials - Unit 2
• The role of the tutor as a counsellor - Unit 3
• Using assignments as a teaching tool - Unit 4

Guide designed as 'a model of good distance education methodology'

The writers endeavoured to design the guide as   'a model of good distance education methodology'. In my opinion that they have been very successful in this endeavour, for the following reasons in particular:

• The course material is clearly structured.   Each unit includes an aim, learning outcomes, an outline of the content to be covered, learning activities, tasks, a summary, a self-assessment activity, and appendixes.
• An interactive approach is used. Tutors have to work through the material provided, think about it, and then complete learning activities. In order to complete these activities, tutors are asked to write down their own ideas, and, in many cases, to relate the learning activities to their own experiences.
• The learning activities, tasks, and self-assessment activities in each unit reflect an outcomes-based approach to education, focusing on what the learner should be able to do or understand after the completion of each unit.
• The learning activities facilitate the achievement of the aims and learning outcomes stated at the beginning of each unit
• The self-assessment activities are directly related to the learning outcomes stated at the beginning of each unit. These self-assessment activities encourage tutors to reflect on their own practice and learning. After completion of the self-assessment activity at the end of each unit, tutors will know which of the learning outcomes for that unit they have achieved and which learning outcomes need further attention. Furthermore, immediately after each self-assessment activity, tutors are asked to think about and write down how they can improve in areas where they feel they need more practice.
• Tutors are provided with possible answers to learning activities, once they have attempted to formulate their own answers for each activity. It is important for distance learners to be given this feedback in their course material, as many of them are studying in isolation and are far away from immediate sources of support. Distance learners need to know whether or not they have understood the section of the work they are currently studying.
• The guide is self-contained. All the content that is required is either provided in the body of each unit or in an appendix at the end of that unit. It is necessary for distance learners, who may not have easy access to libraries or may not be able to purchase extra reference material, to have all the source material provided for them in the guide.
• Excellent use is made of graphics to illustrate points and to stimulate the interest of tutors.
• Margins are provided on most pages of the guide, so that tutors can make notes or write down questions, whenever they wish, alongside any section of the work.

A few suggestions about ways to improve the guide

The following are a few suggestions as to how the guide could be improved:
• Icons are used throughout the guide to draw the tutor's attention to
• Learning activities;
• Tasks;
• Summaries; and,
• Self-assessment activities.

However, the icons used are too similar. In the present format it is not the icon, but words surrounding the icon (such as 'summary' or 'self-assessment activity') that distinguish the specific feature. The icons used should be much more distinctive, and should reflect the feature being highlighted. As an example, a picture of a tutor looking into a mirror could be used as the icon for self-assessment activities.
• In Unit Two the term 'objectives' is used both in the statement of the learning outcomes and in the self-assessment activity.  In keeping with current educational thinking, the term 'learning outcomes' should be used instead of the term objectives.
• Much more space should be provided to rewrite a dialogue that appears on page 23 of Unit Two. The original dialogue takes up about three-quarters of a page in the guide, yet only five lines are provided for tutors to show how they could improve on the dialogue by rewriting it.
• Unit Three deals with counselling and includes helping learners to organize their study time and study space. However, it would be extremely useful to distance learners to have a section included in this unit that would help them to work though their study material.

CONCLUSION

This guide will be particularly useful to all tutors, course writers, and course evaluators who work at the college where I am employed, and I feel sure would be equally useful to other tutors and course writers who work at other institutions in the field of distance education. Tutors can use the guide to improve the support they are currently offering their learners. The guide can also be used as a basis for staff development workshops in educational institutions. Workshops could be held on topics such as one-to-one, telephone or group tutorials, providing counselling for students, and using assignments as a teaching and learning tool.

Course writers can use the methodology described above as a guide for the writing of their own course material, and the guide can provide course evaluators with a yardstick by which to judge course material that they need to evaluate.

I would recommend this guide very highly to all those involved with offering learners support through distance education.