The Tutor and Quality Assurance
in Distance Education
Introduction
The provision of distance education has entered a period in which
education is regarded as a commodity. The price tag attached to it is determined by
demand, based on customers' perception of the quality of the tuition offered. The
commoditisation of education is, in part, due to modem day challenges that tertiary
institutions face, such as the scarcity of resources resulting from the reduction of
subventions from national governments, at the time when the customer demands more value
for money. The need to meet this "value" necessitates the adoption of quality
assurance ethos in the provision of education and training. The need for quality assurance
is more evident in distance education programmes where learners have a choice among
institutions that provide the service and courses offered. The success of the beaming
process is increasingly measured by the high number of satisfied customers and low numbers
of drop-outs, and not pedagogical imperatives. Gone are the days that institutions had
healthy enrolments by virtue of their proximity to a specific target group, family loyalty
or monopoly of scholarship and expertise within a given province or country. The provision
of distance education programmes has increasingly become international, particularly with
the arrival of the internet. The subsequent establishment of study centres equipped with
information technology (IT) further improved student support services. These centres
provide efficient infrastructure through which teaching
materials and student - tutor interaction are maintained. In most developed countries,
ITs have successfully replaced the postal system in the distribution of beaming materials.
assignments and general communication.
The situation outlined above presents distance education institutions with the
challenge to consciously build quality control initiatives in their teaching repertoire.
Therefore, quality assurance should be an integral component in the design of courses and
their delivery in distance education. Quality assurance is a component that is
increasingly used to give a competitive edge to a distance education programme.
It is important at this point to briefly review Quality and Quality
control issues in distance education in order to develop operational notions of these
concepts. The Pocket Oxford Dictionary (1992) defines quality and quality
control as "degree of excellence" and "maintaining of standards in
products or services by inspection, testing samples, etc.", respectively. Reid
and Robertshaw (1991) associated quality with "fitness for purpose", as it is
defined in Engineering where it is frequently used. They identified the purpose of quality
control as the successful learning by means of distance education methods. It would seem
that quality in distance education defines the quest to achieve high standards of
excellence or competence in the entire practise that institutions in this discipline adopt
and quality control being the art of maintaining these best practises.
It is difficult to define quality in distance education. However, its attributes are
easily identifiable. Reid and Robertshaw (1991) listed the following;
* a syllabus relevant to the needs, interests and goals of the
students;
- an assessment and examination system which measures accurately the extent to which
knowledge has been acquired by the students;
- a higher retention rate or lower dropout rate (than that of lower quality courses),
- a higher pass rate than that achieved by equivalent courses of lower quality
The practice of quality assurance in distance education, was adopted
from the world of commerce where it is used in order to maintain standards of goods and
services for purposes of competition and reliability. The adoption of quality assurance is
appropriate in the current decade, considering that continuing and distance education are
now big business. This scenario has necessitated that distance education institution
consider the quality of the tuition they provide more closely. Quality assurance
strategies are now built into the processes of writing self-instructional materials,
teaching and student support. However, the tutor is still an indispensable component of
student support system in distance education, despite the current emphasis on student
centred learning.
A student support system should be put in place before the distance
beaming programme commences. The following management tasks should be executed in
sequence; putting the support system in place, helping students to use the system and
monitoring the learners to ensure that they get the support they need. Identified tutors'
duties are; to function as a subject expert, gateway to other resources, to give feedback
on progress, to encourage / assist with personal problems and to assess learners (Freeman,
1997, p.48 - 49).
The tutor is strategically placed between distance education clients
and the institution. On the one hand, the tutor has knowledge of methods and the
philosophy of the institution which provides distance education, and is also informed on
the effectiveness of the service delivery in meeting work and career needs of the clients,
on the other. The tutor is placed at the "coal face" of the student support
service provided by the institution. Consequently, the tutor is in a position to provide
the institution with the necessary feedback. This may be in the form of suggestions on
course material development, programme administration and general logistics. Therefore,
tutorials and general student support provisions provide an avenue for quality assurance
intervention in distance education.
Quality control measures should be established in the administration of
distance education programmes, course material production and teaching or conducting
tutorials.
An insight into some of these control measures was provided by results
of a survey conducted by Scriven (1991), among distance education students and
practitioners at Queensland University of Technology in Australia. The study investigated
what these groups considered essential in programme administration, course material
production and teaching and conducting tutorials for successful beaming by distance.
On distance programme administration, the essential attributes
identified were prompt acknowledgement of student admission and enrolment, prompt
materials delivery and access to the institution's administration and library by
telephone. They considered the provision of clear statements of objectives, absence of
typographical errors, unambiguous statement of assessment requirements, provision of guide
to using readings and further readings as the necessary attributes of a successful course
material production. The results showed that they considered quality conducting tutorials
and teaching as processes that entailed fast response to queries, fast assignment
turnaround, legible, friendly and supportive comments on submitted assignments and the
provision of external library services.
This paper will explore tools that the tutor should endeavour to
effectively use in order to enhance and to maintain quality of the beaming process. These
tools are in the areas of programme administration, course material production, teaching
and conducting tutorials. The range of student support personnel could include line
managers and mentors, depending on the situation.
Conducting tutorials and programme administration.
Distance education programmes, and indeed all educational programmes,
are reviewed from time to time in order to assess their relevance to the target group. At
the very least, this process may only require better targeting of the programme. A
thorough programme evaluation, however, would include gathering information from current
and previous cohorts on the target group. The tutor can make initiatives to solicit
students' views on programme design, content, logistics and its ability to meet their
expectations and career objectives. The tutor may gather some of this information during
normal tutorials sessions.
The tutor is also expected to assume the role of a programme
administrator. Duties would entail addressing typical issues such as monitoring
assignments due dates, preparing for residential schools, keeping up to date records of
assessment and events and providing information on other courses provided by the
institution. The tutor is the first point of call, particularly when there is little
information technology connectivity between the study centre and the main campus, with
which students may access such information from home or work. In this role the tutor
complements the duties of the Study Centre administrator / co-ordinator. In addition, the
tutor has to give feedback to the administration as regards the students' inputs into the
programme administration. This could include, negotiating for extensions of assignments
due dates and fee payments arrangements, examinations dates or requests for additional
tutorials. The same mechanism could be used for the evaluation of the course content and
conducting tutorials by students. The accessibility of the tutor ensures quick response to
and from the administration as regards how students and the programme administrator would
like the distance education course to be conducted.
The tutor's input into course material production.
The writing of course material
The tutor is often not a member of the course material development
team. This team is often composed of programme planners, administrators, writers, editors,
instructional designers and graphic artists, though not exclusively. The tutor is often
brought in after the writing of the material is completed, just before the programme is
launched. This invitation comes almost as an after thought. This does not take cognisance
of the fact that the success of the teaching repertoire and the quality of tuition
provided in distance education programme depend on effective interpretation and
communication of the material to the student. This is the role of the tutor.
The tutor by virtue of his or her involvement in the teaching of the
course, becomes an external peer reviewer of the course material. This is so because it is
the tutors' duty to facilitate the beaming process such that the material becomes
successful in meeting the needs of the target group. That is to say, the tutor may
determine the suitable sequence in which the material is taught or modify certain parts of
it in order to better effect learning of skills and concepts. This results in the improved
quality of teaching.
It is apparent that the quality of tuition and tutorials are, to a
large extent, dependent on the tutor's input. Therefore, the tutor could be more effective
if involved at all stages of the programme, i.e. planning, writing and delivery. Better
still, the tutor should be a member of the course writing team whenever it is possible.
Due to the high turnover of tutors, the induction of tutors in the philosophy and
management style of the programme is a necessity. Therefore, it is advocated that in order
to improve the quality of teaching, the tutor should be party to the writing or course
material review team.
Ensuring the success of the course material.
Distance Education, by definition, involves the learner receiving tuition from a
distance.
This situation presents challenges to instructional design since the
study materials should, as much as possible, simulate and contain all the necessary
learning activities and attributes that traditional face-to-face learning provides.
Therefore, the course study material should contain all that which the syllabus
prescribes. The tutor should endeavour to enhance the quality of tuition during tutorial
sessions.
The quality of tuition may be significantly enhanced when tutors are
innovative in generating activities that students can do in order to illustrate and enrich
the learning objectives outlined in the course study materials. Tutors should be effective
teachers if the quality of the course material is to be enhanced. These activities could
be in the form a one minute practical; such as viewing a leaf structure under a
microscope, a short laboratory exercise, or extensive projects such as the observation and
measuring of soil erosion over a period of time, say a year.
The tutor should consider building interesting, relevant and intellectually stimulating
activities into the study materials so that these texts are interactive. This
requires innovation. In essence, activities are built into the text in order to help
students to learn by doing. These activities should be varied in order to assess the
different skills. It is assumed that the text will already have been written with clear
objectives, in a user friendly language, with appropriate illustrations, appropriate media
and further study assistance.
Appropriate use of activities in learning situations encourage learning
by doing asopposed to the memorisation of facts. Activities provide immediate feedback on
the students' beaming progress. They keep the students interested in the beaming process
and elicit active participation from students. In addition, they allow for the sharing of
students' prior experience and interpretation of issues being learnt.
Activities may be abused. They may be used to pad inadequate work.
Rowntree (1992) is of the opinion that the abuse of activities maybe avoided by making
them relevant to the curriculum objectives and that they should be made flexible so that
some are compulsory while others are done at the discretion of the student.
According to (Rowntree 1994), intext activities may take any of the
three forms; namely, questions or short exercises, review questions and assignments and
comprehensive assessments. These activities are placed as frequently as possible within
the text, at the end of each section and after a chapter or whole module, respectively.
Their function is to assess and ensure that students understand concepts covered in a
given section of the course. This approach may be adopted and modified by the tutor in
order to design activities that supplement the course material where inadequacies have
been identified.
How to develop Activities.
The tutor may adopt, with the necessary modifications, the approach
recommended by Kember (1991) for intext activities. It is recommended that the tutor
assumes the knowledge students possess, considers what they have been taught and determine
what they anticipate in order to develop activities that elicit action needed to reach a
given response. In addition, the type of response should be generated from students by
providing several possible responses. The tutor should identify the correct response,
after students have attempted the problem, and explain to them what response was expected
and reasons thereof.
The material being taught is often new to the learner or it is
presented in a format alien to the student. Therefore, it is necessary to follow each new
concept, theory or hypothesis with an activity. The learner is asked to comment, discuss
or evaluate the new knowledge using previous experience, intellect or inference. The tutor
should then provide the correct/ expected response as well as the rationale or logic to
support his or her argument. In the event that the question is abstract, possible response
should be explored with the learner.
The duration that each activity should take must be stipulated.
Equally, the length of a response should be given if it is not clear from the question
itself, Activities should be varied (in type and length) to avoid monotony in learning.
Feedback should be unambiguous and comprehensive as learners are at a distance. They need
as much assistance as possible.
The role of activities in the distance teaching repetoire.
The use of activities in distance learning materials has far reaching
implications in building a case for the validity of this mode of instruction. It indicates
that distance education can be successfully undertaken if appropriate activities are built
into the teaching repetiore and that teaching need not be a non-innovative and one way
process. On the contrary, distance teaching should be an innovative and stimulating
process in which the learner and the tutor are equal and symbiotic partners. This
co-operative learning atmosphere ensure quality and cross fertilisation of their ideas as
prior knowledge and past experience are called upon when activities are used.
The mode of teaching which allows positive collaboration, exchange of
ideas and prior experiences (constructivism) lays the foundation for effective learner
support in distance education. This "meeting of minds" was aptly described by
Bruner (cited in Tait, 1996, p. 105) as follows;
The language of education, if it is to be an invitation to reflection and culture
creating, cannot be the so-called uncontaminated language of fact and objectivity' It must
express stance and counter-stance and, in the process, leave place for reflection, for
metacognition. It is this that permits one to reach higher ground: this process of
objectifying in language and image what one has thought and then turning around on it and
reconsidering it.
Quality and Programme evaluation.
In distance education, evaluation is often used as a method for
assessing competencies that students attain due to a training intervention. Competencies'
evaluation is but one item in quality assurance. However, the significance of evaluation
as a quality control measure of the whole distance education programme should not be
ignored. The evaluation of a distance education programme by evaluating skills
competencies is recommended in this paper as it provides information that could be used to
evaluate the teaching programme and student performance simultaneously.
Distance education programmes should be evolved in a systematic manner
which addresses the outcomes of the training event, evaluation instruments, timing of the
evaluation process, types of evaluation and benchmarking in order to realise the
objectives the training programme is aimed to achieve. Prior to the commencement of the
evaluation process, it has to be explicitly established what it is that is to be assessed.
This will determine the approach to be adopted for the evaluation process. The next step
is to develop techniques or instruments that are capable of achieving this task. In so
doing, it should be recognised that like any other project; distance education programmes
have a planning stage, execution stage and completion stage. All these stages need to be
evaluated in relation to the objectives of the programme in order to ensure quality.
Recommendations for the evaluation of the entire programme emanate, in part, from the
students' assessment conducted by the tutor. Therefore, the tutor is central to the
quality control of a distance education programme.
Quality in teaching and conducting., tutorials.
Tutors could improve the quality of distance education programmes by
assisting their students with the necessary skills for the preparation of assignments and
by conducting effective student continuous assessment. They should also assist their
students understand the context in which assignments, tests and examination questions are
set. It should be the tutor's responsibility to evaluate these questions as regard their
relevance to course objectives and skills that the course is geared to impart, in the
interest of programme quality control. The tutor will be functioning as a segment that
completes the loop that ties course administrators / co-ordinators and students. This
allows for any of the tripartite groups' intervention in order to maintain quality and
relevance of the course at all times. In this situation, the tutor will be executing the
role of a quality teaching facilitator.
In the management by objectives approach, the assessment of skills
attained and knowledge gained due to the training intervention is a key quality control
exercise. Quality being "fitness for purpose", there is need to ascertain that
skills and competencies identified the programme objectives are indeed being imparted.
Part of this question can be answered by studying the results of continuous assessment
conducted by the tutor and possibly the course co-ordinator. Standards of assessment would
have been set and if not available the tutor should assist in this exercise. Therefore,
quality assessment procedures significantly contribute to course quality assurance as
deficiencies identified during assessment stages can be made good before students'
performance deteriorates.
It is important to note that while addressing inadequacies in students'
performance, this process will simultaneously be assessing the effectiveness of course
material provisions, set assignments, tests and examinations questions, as well as
equipment for practicals and general student support. Therefore, student assessment should
be viewed in this light and be accorded the seriousness it deserves by the tutor, not in
the narrow aspect of considering how many students passed or failed a given test. Should
poor results be obtained during assessment, this should not be viewed negatively by the
tutor as it may contain an important message regarding a part of student support other
than tutorials which requires the tutor's attention. This approach can help the tutor to
maintain quality in student support in particular, and distance education in general.
The tutor should take initiative in forging working relationships with
the students' supervisors at their workplaces. The testing of gains in skills is
incomplete without a follow-up to the trainee's workplace in order to assess the
effectiveness with which tasks are performed. This will help the tutor to know how well
skills and competencies gained are utilised. A student report from the tutor may have a
section in which the supervisor can write comments. This will also assist in the
evaluation of the training programme. A beaming contract may be signed among the line
manager, student and tutor, in order for the trainee to gain competence in specific tasks,
determined by a supervisor at the place of work. This is encouraged when using the
in-company training mode of beaming. The beaming contract will be used to identify areas
of weaknesses and these can be remedied with the help of the supervisor.
The tutor and general student support.
To improve the quality of student support, the tutor should take
advantage and joy to help students learn to competently use technology available at the
study centre or institution. This technology could be in the form of the internet
connectivity, wordprocessing and general computing facilities. The internet connectivity
can be exploited in searching for the information required for an assignment or further
reading or for communicating with lecturers at the main campus. This facility may also be
used by students to send their assignments or to request for assistance from their
lecturers. The word-processing could help to improve work that students present to their
tutor, course co-ordinator or lecturers. Computing skills are essential for good quality
work presentations, particularly for drawing graphs and similar illustrations. In
addition, computing skills may be promoted as a form of communication skills.
There is concern in the rapid growth and use of technology in distance
education. The use of technology is seen as impersonal, industrial and bureaucratic (Tait,
1996, p.68). This concern had been raised earlier by Peters (cited in Tait, 1996, p.68) in
the following words;
a process of alienation takes place when students are confronted with technical
artefacts instead of human beings. Personal relations become indirect, depersonalised and
lose much of their reality.
This anxiety, not withstanding, distance education should still exploit
advantages ushered in by appropriate usage of information technology communication tools
such as email and teleconferencing, across vast distances. It is also recognised that
technology should be more used for communication amongst students in the form of
teleconferencing and computer conferencing, as they mimic personal conversations.
One of the advocates (Mason, cited in cited in Tait, 1996, p.68) of this approach had
this to say:
computer conferencing is often more personal, more intimate and more community - making
than comparable face - to - face situations... computer conferencing supports a
kind of intimacy which is more feeling of social presence.
The tutor should also assist students with their study and
communication skills, particularly if he or she is in charge of a study centre that is far
from the main campus. The tutor could act as a councillor or career guidance officer when
these professionals are not available. When the tutor cannot offer assistance that the
student requires, then he should be able to direct the student to the relevant authority
for such assistance. Therefore, the tutor by virtue of his or her position in distance
education is supposed to be an essential resource person who has empathy with students'
predicaments. The tutor should be in possession of a thorough understanding of how
distance education functions.
Tutor support and quality assurance.
Subjects and personal tutors need to be supported in order to enhance the quality of
teaching. They should be equipped with the skills they need in order to provide quality
support service. Tutor development should identify specific needs for each tutor in order
that he or she is given the training necessary. Tutors need up-to-date information
regarding course / programme administration, learner characteristics of their group,
learner progress, tutor competence and feedback on students assessment provided by
supervisors at workplaces. They need to be given adequate information regarding the
institution and how it works during the recruitment and induction stages (Freeman, 1997,
p.63-64).
There should be periodical training sessions for tutors and other support staff such as
counsellors, career advisors and other non-teaching staff. The institution should
haveelaborate plans for training its tutors and those involved in student support.
Conclusion.
The tutor is viewed as a facilitator for the beaming process despite
the fact that beaming should be student centred. Tutorship should be regarded as an
additional students support service. Tutorship provides timely assistance as regards
course administration, course design and the formulation of innovative and essential
instruction methods. In addition, the tutor provides flexibility in the beaming process as
he can use illustrations familiar to the community in the teaching repertoire. This is
essential when study materials used are imported from countries that do not have similar
cultural and technological setting as the one in which the teaching is being effected. It
should be noted that the success and quality of distance teaching and beaming, based on
printed course study material, still depends on the tutor despite the quality control
measures put into its production.
References:
Pocket Oxford Dictionary (New Edition). 1992. Clarendon Press. Oxford. p734.
Reid C.N., and Robertshaw M. 1991 The Quest for quality, east and
west (in Quality in distance education), eds., Atkinson R., McBeath, and Meacham, D.
Papers presented at the Tenth Biennial Forum of the Australian and South Pacific Extemal
Studies Association, held at Charles Sturt University Mitchell Campus, Bathurst, NSW.
Australia. ASPESA. p.424.
Scriven B. 1991 Perceptions of quality in distance education (in
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