Evaluating the quality of students' support services in distance education institutions is vital because by nature Open Distance Learning (ODL) is a high-involvement service industry, with multiple student support service encounters. Most quality evaluation models tend to view quality from the institutional perspective. As a result, little is known about the determinants of service quality, which distance education students can use to evaluate the support services provided by their institutions. The aim of this study is to evaluate the quality of support services from the current users of the services. It is through students' expectations and perceptions of their experiences that we shall understand the quality of the support services needed. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to understand distance students' perceptions and expectations of the service received. The results of the study indicated that service quality in distance education can be measured by six dimensions namely; tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, delivery, assurance and student participation. Each dimension can be measured by a number of attributes. The dimensions will be useful in helping distance education institutions evaluate the quality of their support services from students' perspective; by so doing monitoring the overall performance of their services.
The University of South Africa (UNISA) is one of the distance education universities that is shifting from open distance learning (ODL) to open distance e-learning (ODeL). UNISA started as a correspondence institution in the 1950s and it has since evolved into an ODeL university. The aim of this research was to assess and determine the maturity levels of UNISA lecturers’ and tutors’ explorations of various forms of e-learning technologies to support students in an ODeL environment. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 academic staff members. A hybrid approach involving inductive and deductive reasoning was used to guide the whole research process. The online course design maturity model (OCDMM) was modified and adapted in order to guide data collection, data analysis, and the interpretation of results. The results of the study indicate that the maturity levels of UNISA’s student support e-learning technologies are at the basic levels of the maturity assessment framework for open distance e-learning. It is hoped that the results of this research will serve as a starting point that the University can use to constantly measure improvements made in advancing e-learning activities.
Recently, the University of South Africa widened access to academic facilities and services at one of its study centres. Although this is laudable and demonstrates a commitment by the university towards its students, it raises these three concerns (1) What is the occupancy rate of the facilities? (2) To what extent are these improved facilities cost-effective? (3) What is the quality of the services at these facilities? A modified iron triangle was employed to analyse and determine accessibility, cost-effectiveness and the quality of the facilities. Data mining techniques involving descriptive analysis indicated that the most utilised service facilities were the computer laboratories and the least utilised was the study space. Moreover, perceived service quality of the facilities was rated good to excellent by the majority of the respondents. The modified iron triangle was found to be useful in helping us understand Student Support Excellence Project’s (SSEP) improvements at the identified study centre.
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