REVIEW OF LITERATURE
3.9 Instructional support
3.9.2 Contact tutorials
specialists and learners should be continuous. Updating of course materials is necessary to keep the subject matter current and relevant.
Instructional material development and production is a team effort. A development team should include subject experts, instructional designers, writers and editors, audio and video production staff, and curriculum developers. It is important to identify these "people resources", and assign appropriate tasks, responsibilities, and timelines, so that quality control is maintained. It is also important that learning modules be delivered on time to mesh with the school schedule and that of service providers (Sherry 1996). My study explored the support structures and strategies that adults adopted when using the ZOU modules in order to cope with DL.
causes problems when there is a dissenting opinion that cannot be picked up on/ with non-verbal cues and is misperceived as a verbal attack. This miscommunication can cause problems as the class progresses. It is fair to say that compressed video can magnify the strengths and weaknesses of the instructor. Students are prone to pick up on a lack of organization and direction and respond with apathy and absenteeism (Valentine 2002).
Contact tutorials are an effective learner support mechanism to provide teacher- student and student-student dialogue. Contact tutoring helps because the unpredictability of learning requires human intervention. Buckley et al (2010:61) cite Bates (1990) who states that, ―-human tutors are still the most effective way to deal with learning and teaching that requires interpretation and individual analysis‖.
Human contact is necessary for tutors to respond to learners in face-to-face scenarios and understand them individually more than in computer-mediated environments.
When tutors know students personally, they know what their weaknesses and strengths are, and they can provide suitable remedial support (Buckley et al 2010).
Tutorials support students and their learning beyond pedagogical considerations to encompass emotional, social and psychological support. Activities involved in tutorials include: learning guidance, eliciting performance and feedback, assessing performance, and promoting retention and transfer of knowledge (Entwistle and Ramsden 1983)
Proximity and eye contact are important factors in education that are limited in the DL environment. Valentine (2002) quotes McKnight (2000: 2) arguing that while we recognize this connection, in the DL environment they are ―both severely and sometimes permanently compromised‖. Lecturers are unable to observe the emotions of the students and cannot detect moments of anxiety which limits
lecturers‘ ability to respond to student needs. The instructor must do all that is possible to overcome the limits of technology and involve the students in an environment of interaction that creates the feeling of a true class (Valentine 2002).
Learning in a real-life context requires the consideration of other factors than pedagogic support. Dialogue or interactivity is one of them. Moore (1989)‘s theory on transactional distance (P.19) differentiates between three types of interaction:
learner-content, learner-instructor and learner-learner. These are best assured by contact tutorials in DL. Learner-content interaction is often extrinsically induced but during tutorials this is enabled by learner-instructor interaction and learner-learner interaction. Moore identifies roles fulfilled by learner-instructor interaction such as:
organisation of activities, presentation of information, and demonstration of skills, modelling of attitudes and values, motivating, stimulating and maintaining interest, application of what is learnt, evaluating progress, and providing information, support and encouragement (Entwistle and Ramsden 1983).
Entwistle and Ramsden (1983) also found that in addition to the pedagogical role, a contact tutor fulfils many roles including providing guidance, encouragement, feedback, and pastoral activities. . Students benefit from contact with their peers, for learning support and psycho-social support. Students also benefit by establishing relationship with the tutor as well as eliciting verbal and written information. Current and topical issues may be included at short notice adding interest and immediacy.
Students learn from each other and also student groups benefit from entropy.
However, tutorials need proper management to ensure effective participation by all the learners. Sometimes there may be domination by some and little interaction for other students. Tutorial success relies on the tutor‘s skills. While students prefer face-to-face tutorials and they are most effective in building collective affiliation, their provision at local level is expensive. Teleconferencing is more cost effective for that purpose (Kember 1995.
Tutorials promote the active learning approach advocated by andragogy (P.26) and constructivism (P.40). Constructivist theory prefers course materials that include participatory activities rather than straight lectures (Aylward 2001). In concurrence, Sherry (1996:339) emphasizes the need to include andragogical learner experience as she quotes Simon (1994) who says, ―Human beings are at their best when they interact with the real world and draw lessons from the bumps and bruises they get".
She also cites Savery and Duffy (1995) who argue that both situated cognition and problem-based learning are based on constructivist principles in which a learner actively constructs knowledge by interacting with the material to be learned. These views are echoed by Kember (1995) when he cites Driver and Oldham (1985) advocating for constructivist teaching sequence in contact tutorials in order to promote conceptual change. Students need to, through the advance and retreat motion, repeat the sequence of evaluating then clarifying their beliefs against alternative conceptual frameworks. By posing a series of questions, students challenge and reform their conceptions thereby adopting a sense of ownership of the learning goals. Besides that, inquiry learning is a new technique that tutors can use to encourage active learning in contact tutorials. Teachers should not be deliverers of fixed information but, should be facilitators of discovery learning by students, through progressive discourse. Inquiry teaching promotes an environment that tolerates ambiguity and encourages students' questions (Sherry 1996).
Instead of lecturing on the course material, tutors must facilitate activities which provide learners opportunities to articulate their understanding and discuss issues among themselves. This enables learners to move beyond knowing information to application of the knowledge in different situations. B.Ed. Honours programme at the University of Natal supported students with four formal tutorial sessions of six hours each, per module (Bertram 2001). This reduces the students‘ psychological insecurity which becomes worse when: the learners are geographically isolated by
distance, timetables do not take into consideration their needs, learning materials are in scarce supply and learners are new to DL experience and in an institution without a student services facility (Galusha 2006). The interplay of: presenting, questioning, responding, reacting and structuring determine the success of tutorials. The more opportunity that students have to make their conceptualisations explicit, the more their weaknesses are addressed, and the more concepts to be learned are explored and integrated in students' knowledge (Entwistle and Ramsden 1983).
Successful DL systems involve interactivity as well as active learning in the classroom. ZOU uses the Norwegian Model which combines mediated distance teaching with local face-to-face teaching (Sherry 1996). However, in 2008 its funding became so unsustainable, due to economic and political challenges that Zimbabwe was experiencing ( P.7), that contact tutorial hours were reduced from 10 hours to 4 hours (Kangai and Bukaliya 2010) per semester.
Valentine (2002) found that the pre-dominant use of part-time academic staff during contact tutorials is a common practice in DL. Part-time tutors are the majority of academic staff at ZOU (Izuagie 2001). Yet Valentine (2002) quotes Caffarella et al (1992:3) who found off campus instructors to be, ―a demoralized bunch, perceiving poor working conditions, isolation, personal and professional deprivation‖. Such tutors are not always convinced that administration is behind DL. The rewards are not always there for the good DL tutors. Valentine also quotes Sherritt (1996: 4) who found that, ―Tenure and promotion usually does not recognize excellent off campus teaching‖. This attitude is hardly conducive to an effective learning environment for the students. If the administration and instructors are lacking in true commitment, it is bound to have a negative influence on the entire DL experience (Valentine 2002).
My study explored the support structures and strategies used by adults to deal with challenges faced in contact tutorials and to cope with DL at ZOU.