2002/2003 (8 pages)
March 24, 2003 – Cave Hill
Campus, Barbados
In order to suit the prevailing regional situation and the UWI environment, and to highlight the characteristics of our system appropriately, we label our approach 'flexible learner centred'. Thus characterised, it has implications for our choice of curricular and instructional design, delivery models, examination types, provision for interaction and learner support and technology. We cannot be totally virtual at this stage. Though we are working to move beyond traditional DE operations to incorporate latest available technologies, yet our main objective is to provide opportunities to the largest number of students region wide and outside. With this in view we need to revisit our three major operations namely i) pedagogy, ii) network and iii) administration, and plan modifications and implement them cautiously as soon as possible. This paper pertains to the new UWIDEC pedagogy. The other two themes have been put forth in Paper 3 and Paper 4 respectively.
New UWIDEC Pedagogy
The UWIDEC courses on offer spread over the usual three learning domains namely i) the cognitive domain, ii) the psychomotor domain and iii) the affective domain. Depending partly on the objectives and partly on the nature of the subject concerned, a course may involve varying degrees of one or more of these domains, which prescribe its components. For example, 40% of a science course may deal with theory (cognitive domain), 40% with practical work (psychomotor domain) and 20% with the essentials of scientific attitude (affective domain) specific to the subject concerned. These three elements dictate the course design. The course coordinator concerned and the curriculum development specialist will as a rule outline the course design before they embark on preparing the course package. The importance of the outline lies in its implications for the curricular design and course delivery, which must correspond to the following components of pedagogy.
The necessary course design and
the chosen pedagogic approach dictate the composition of the course package. At
present the UWIDEC course package comprises i) printed self-learning course
materials including access devices and learner activities, ii) a course guide,
iii) selected original readings to
support course materials, iv) tutors' guides, v) local tutorial support and vi)
teleconferences with the course coordinator. The first three of these
components allow students their own place, time and pace, but the last three
necessitate a place, time and pace specific synchronous transaction which is a
major drawback in our present system having adverse implications for resources
as well as management. We have to move
away from synchronous transactions, the sole argument for which is the need
for interaction.
In order to
provide interaction, we need i) to rationalize its need with regard to each and
every subject case by case and ii) to prescribe a suitable way to achieve it
satisfactorily in each and every case. In this direction steps need to be taken
to i) include a suggested work schedule, assignments and assessment/examination
related information in the course guide, ii) introduce case-, lab- and/or
field-work wherever needed, iii) incorporate CD ROMs with simulated tutorials
and items that need visual support and iv) introduce material as well as
activities on the Web/Internet. The period of transition between our current
and proposed future practices should materialize the required trade off between
the last three items in the previous paragraph and the four items in this one. The process has to be slow and
characterized by caution.
The approach is outlined as follows:
1. Generally, a 3-credit undergraduate course works around a prescribed study time (PST) of 100 clock hours: 77-80 hours for the self-instructional study materials, 15-12 hours for tutorials and 8 hours of teleconferences among the course co-ordinators, tutors and/or learners. A learner has to make a provision for additional time (we may call it learners’ private time -- LPT) to work on readings, assignments and whatever else s/he may do to internalise the course content and prepare for examinations.
2. Printed course materials will comprise stand-alone self-instructional study materials, accompanying readings, a course guide (including advice on how to work through the materials, sample examination question papers, assignments and/or on-course tests, course work and course-specific tutorial sheets), tutors’ guide (only for the tutors) and depending on the nature of courses some other relevant components.
3. Course guides will be modified to include details about the work schedule, assignments (advising learners up-front what they are expected to do and submit) and information with guidance about assessment and examinations (including model question papers etc.).
4. We will continue with the print materials while transformation in the major processes is effected and executed.
5. Web-based support will comprise general information, course materials, course support, interaction (asynchronous) and on-line examinations. These facilities, however, will not be in place immediately, but steps will be taken to progressively materialise them for learners to access them from wherever they can.
6. In the context of DE, in functional terms, University Centres/Sites will by degrees be transformed into resource centres (today they function as tutorial and teleconference centres mainly).
7. All DE students will have to undergo enabling courses in the use of ICT and study skills for networked studies and resource based learning respectively.
8. Course coordinators and tutors will be withdrawn steadily from their present activities and brought to take on new ones necessitated by the shift in operations.
Local Tutorial support
Theoretically, for every course on offer, we have to arrange 30 tutors (as the number of UWI Centres/Sites is around 30). Thus the cost of tutorial services per course comes to 30 (locations) x 12 (hours per course) x 75 (US$ per hour) = US$27,000. The fee we charge is US$180 per course. Considering tutorials as the sole cost head, to break even, we need 27,000/180 = 150 registrations per course. We do not have this luxury.
Secondly, beyond level I courses, it is not easy to get suitable tutors at all the locations. We are forced to go without a tutor or make compromises, which is strongly and rightly resented by the faculties and the students concerned. Thirdly, there are cases where the number of learners per course at a location is very small (just one or two, for example). This is a situation that is not only demotivating for the tutor, but also not viable economically. Fourthly, there are situations where learners are being charged an extra amount (entirely violating the university regulations) for additional tutorials outside the prescribed UWIDEC norms, because learners ask for extra face-to-face support and are obviously willing to pay for it.
We need a versatile tutorial system that is
economically viable and operationally feasible on the one hand, and on the
other makes pedagogic sense and fulfils learner needs.
1. Tutorials will be based on pre-prepared tutorial sheets, which highlight essential concepts, their applications, major issues and significant learning points. Variations will be allowed in their content and format to accommodate subject-specific requirements.
2. Local face-to-face tutorials will be made available for all the degree level I courses, whatever the size of the tutorial group. Attendance at the tutorial sessions will not be compulsory, but learners will be sensitized to the value and importance of such sessions.
3. At levels II and III, partly because the tutorial groups will be small in most cases and mainly because for these levels tutors are not easily available, it may not be possible to arrange local face-to-face tutorials. Accordingly, tutorials will be arranged by other means. For example, on the UWIDEC Network, using CDs, etc.
4. Tutorials will be built into CD ROMs, to be despatched by post initially and sent electronically subsequently. Further down the path tutors will provide tutorials on-line only.
5. Those who look for face-to-face interaction in addition to what the University provides for will pay a tutorial fee for tutorials arranged locally for them. This will be the responsibility of the Centres/Sites not to be interfered by UWIDEC.
Tutors: appointment,
remuneration, etc.
Assignments:
Library
support
In order to provide additional reading material relevant to a course on offer, currently we try to put together readings to accompany our courses. Readings thus serve as course specific portable mini-libraries as they comprise original work suggested by the course coordinator as essential reading. The problem here is that it is not always possible to put them together mainly because of copyright issues — in certain cases the copyright owners do not bother about our requests; in case they do, the licence fee is prohibitive. In other cases the course coordinator concerned asks for too large a collection which is difficult to manage both economically as well as operationally. Worse still, all the academics concerned are not able to (or perhaps not willing to) supply the relevant reference details for UWIDEC to obtain the required licences.
It is unthinkable (at the present stage of our development) to establish campus-like libraries at all the 30 locations, whatever the improvements. We have to depend on readings till we have a dependable and feasible alternative. Preparation of such readings, however, could be rationalized (in terms of their size and function) and systematised in terms of their development/production.
Overall investments in library facilities must provide for significant inputs for on-line services. Each library must have staff to attend to the concerns of DE students. Hyperlinks in on-line courses will solve this problem quite satisfactorily, provided that Web references are made available by the academics concerned. Obviously, there is a lot of work to be done on this front.
Maintenance
of Standards and Quality Assurance
The University is not clear about the issues of standards and/or quality assurance in the case of distance education. In January 1999, following a discussion on the issue of standards in distance education, I gave a paper entitled "Quality Assurance in Distance Education — the Basic Criteria" to Professor Beckles for him to use in whatever way he could. Much later I had discussions on this theme with the visiting staff from the OBUS and on being asked to make relevant inputs from UWIDEC, in October 2000, I submitted to them a paper on "Educational Standards and Quality Assurance in Distance Education", which appears in YouWe Quality Assurance Forum, No. 6, 2001, UWI. The official document[1] on the UWI's policy on quality, which came out in 2000, pronounces a philosophy that negates the very essentials of distance education. The document quotes Whiteley (1997)[2]:
‘Meeting the customer’s needs’, is often taken as a definition of quality in
industry…..This
may not be a particularly suitable model in an
educational setting as it is often difficult to identify who is the customer
and what is the product. Is the student the customer or is it necessary to take
account of parents or sponsoring employers. The product provided by
an educational institution is a service, which is
intangible, and the production and consumption of the service often occur
simultaneously. Further, the teaching/learning process is difficult to control
in the way industrial processes can be controlled. The inputs cannot be
controlled to ensure they are all the same…….After university-wide discussion
the understanding of quality adopted by the Board
for Undergraduate Studies in its Quality Assurance work was one of fitness for purpose. Such a model
relates quality to the purpose of the service provided …
What has to be noted is that DE is significantly an industrial operation, a fact very well entrenched in the ethos of DE since 1973 following the classic thesis of Otto Peters, who showed that quite a number of DE operations are better understood and assessed as industrial operations. DE produces tangible products, in certain cases on a large scale, stores them and distributes them over distances into different countries and regions. These are industrial operations. Even as we go on-line, we are very close to industrial operations as we deal with tangible objects through the Internet and other activities are very much like e-trade. With these facts in view it is in place to have a note on quality issues included here.
In most of the developed countries the issue of educational standards has been taken over by that of quality assurance in educational dispensation. The mode of education has ceased to be the deciding factor in judging standards. Instead, it is the products and the processes under a mode that reflect the standards. Since the conventional system of education is a point of reference in our case, it is reasonable to start with a comparison and then move on to the current line of thought.
In the conventional systems of education, standards/quality is seen as a function of
1. adequate infrastructure
2. qualified and experienced staff
3. commonly recognised entrance qualifications
4. a standard duration for course completion
5. a well-defined course content
6. a well-defined scheme of assessment
7. well-defined norms for educational transactions — number of lectures,
tutorials, etc.
With the rise of Distance Education in the late 60’s and 70’s, distance educators identified a set of additional criteria to reflect standards in it:
1. the process of course preparation — team approach
2. the study materials thus prepared — quality of advance organizers, access
devices, learner activities, in-text questions, learner friendliness of the
language used, etc.
3. suitability of DE for the subject concerned — for example, at one time DE was not supposed to be suitable for sciences.
4. the provision for didactic transaction by means of peer interaction, self-help
groups, counselling, tutorials, assignments, etc.
The major uneasy difference between the two modes was/is seen in their differing transactions, mainly a near lack of live interaction between the teacher and the taught in DE. In the case of open systems, yet another cause of uneasiness was/is the provision of relaxed entrance qualifications. However, extensive debates and research have (a) shown no significant differences in the achievements of learners following the two different modes and also (b) pointed to the following quality concerns specific to DE.
1. Philosophic concerns: These are value based. A DE programme is rated in terms of its social relevance, satisfaction of learners and its impact on the social and economic systems. DE programmes/courses must address the issues of relevance, access and equity.
2. Systemic concerns: These are process based. The processes that are evaluated are those of curriculum design, assignment handling, course delivery, support services, programme evaluation, etc. The feedback received is used to improve offers continuously.
3. Pedagogic concerns: These are transaction based. How far do the transactions influence learners’ cognitive, psychomotor and affective structures?
While measures for quality assurance in DE were assimilating these concerns, gradual but visible emergence of the new learner, financial stringency in educational spending and the deluge of communication technologies have brought new perspectives to the fore. Consequently, with the changing profile of DE, differing criteria have been articulated to measure its standards — value for money spent on education, ultimate market value of education, value added to the individual, whether or not a technologically enhanced transaction, etc. are some of the examples. It is clear that the issue of standards in DE is no more a matter of hearsay, nor even purely academic in nature; instead it is partly, though importantly, academic and significantly socio-economic and technological. Accordingly, today standards in DE are measured in terms of the following criteria:
1. Curriculum: The purpose of a course, its content and the methods, materials and the process of evaluation used to achieve the purpose.
2. Transactions: The corresponding process of teaching and learning including instructional design, presentation, access devices, learner activities, assignments and the related feedback, peer interaction, tutorials, etc.
3. Support services: The process and content of services provided at pre-course, on-course and post-course stages.
4. Learning resources: The overall infrastructure, range of learning resources, arrangements for the management of change, the quality of the intellectual contributions made by the faculty/institution and the technological inputs.
5. Learners’ achievement: The nature of testing instruments — their validity, reliability and usability; rates of attrition, success rates, etc.
6. Quality assurance mechanisms: Whether a mechanism is in place, in operation and being utilized to enhance the quality of the services, processes and products.
UWIDEC has not been able to mobilize its resources to satisfy these criteria, and the major hurdle in its way is the present system of its management. The system proposed in this document should pave the way for ensuring the quality of UWIDEC offerings.
[1] Whiteley, P. 2000: Quality
Assurance & Audit at The University of the West Indies – Procedures and
Practices, Office of the Board for Undergraduate Studies, Kingston, UWI.
[2] Whiteley, P. 1997:
“Quality Assurance at The University of the West Indies:”, Caribbean Journal of
Education, 19(2), p.191-210.