Developing Student Support for Open and Distance Learning: The EMPOWER Project

Abstract

European universities face great challenges dealing with twenty-first century world changes. Deep transformations are required to a wide range of lifelong learning scenarios, which are replacing traditional modes of university study and giving access to students in more flexible ways. To address the transformation in learning, the European Association of Distance Teaching Universities (EADTU) launched the EMPOWER project in 2015 so that the EADTU could share expertise of distance education universities in the field. The EMPOWER project is organised in 12 areas. One is student support, as the central area for students' success. The project's goal is to empower students to become lifelong , self-directed learners in open, online and blended-learning environments. The plan was to increase student retention and enhance academic performance, integration and satisfaction. This article summarises the work that has been done during the past two years to offer different tools and resources, such as webinars and reports. These can help institutions and academics in their understanding of what underlies student engagement and motivation versus student drop-out. We aim to share expertise about how effective, or not, technology has been for developing innovative, advanced and quality student support services to large and small groups of students. It is too early to judge the success of the student support group of the EMPOWER project. This paper looks at what has been achieved so far. In particular it outlines the reasons for focusing on the problem of student drop-out and how student support may help to ameliorate the problem.

Supporting students to succeed in open and distance learning in the Open University of Sri Lanka and Universitas Terbuka Indonesia

“…Despite the transformation of ODL into a technology-based system, the principles of support services for distance learners remain the same, in which students are engaged in learning and motivated to learn independently and autonomously. Recent research highlights the importance of academic and non-academic support and the roles of technologies to enable the development of more flexible, interactive and personalized learning environments that require new ways of providing learning support for open, distance and online students (Sánchez-Elvira Paniagua and Simpson, 2018). Earlier, Tait (2003) explained that distance students need support for three reasons, namely the needs for support, the reduction of dropout and the nature of learning.…”

How University Lecturers and Students Interpret Opportunities and Challenges of Online Mode of Learning

“…Students learning through an online mode need adequate learning materials and continuous support to manage learning from home (Sánchez-Elvira Paniagua & Simpson, 2018). Simpson (2013), for example, reported, students who had access to digital learning materials and were learning from home shared their lessons on blogs, commented on others' posts and asked questions to authors.…”

Investigating Student’s Satisfaction and Acceptance of Digital Technology in Higher Education in Indonesia

“…Culture is the most influential factor for individual attitudes in accepting and using various technologies [6]. Previous studies found cross-cultural broadening of models in acceptance of technology, like technology acceptance models [7]. However, the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model is a newer instrument that desegregates reasoned action theory, motivational models, and acceptance models [8].…”