Learner Support Systems & Services (413)

Unit 4: Supplemental Interaction

4.2 Discussion on the Biases of a Conventional Teacher: A Justification

A distance tutor, in the strict sense, won’t be called a tutor or teacher but an examiner who guides learners in their teaching-learning activities. A tutor collects relevant information on a particular course and guides the learners according to their needs. He/she prepares the basic reading lists and designs the learning tasks (assignments) and other types of worksheets suitable for the course objectives. The distance learners are expected to study the course units and answer the assignments in written form. The assignment responses are assessed and awarded with grades by the tutor and sent back to the learners. The internal assessment grades and the final examination grades put together decide the final grades.

4.3 Significance of Supplemental Interaction

Such communication follows primary communication (i.e. academic and/or personal) which appears in the form of tutor comments. After a distance learner gets his/her evaluated assignment responses back from the institution, he/she feels a need for further explanations – he/she may not agree with the tutor’s comments, or assessment, or some other significant point may emerge from those comments. In either case, the learner would continue communicating with and expect replies from the tutors. Such communication may be called ‘Supplemental Communication’, and it is welcome.

4.4 Supplemental Interaction: Offering Additional Support to Learners 4.4.1 Tasks of a Distance Teacher 4.4.2 Submission Density of Assignment-Responses 4.4.3 Tutorials

4.4.1 Tasks of a Distance Teacher: A distance teacher should be able to: a) Motivate the distance learner to remain on the course, help him/ her start again wherever s/he gets stuck because of some reasons— academic or non-academic; b) Provide individualized guidance—each distance learner has to be approached and attended individually; c) Provide feedback on learner’s performance and also on one’s success in the positive transfer and successful application of new learning; d) Remove the sense of isolation which the distance learner is bound to suffer from and make him/her feel that s/he is one among many fellow learners, though s/he does not meet them often; e) Stimulate independent and original thinking, problem solving and discovering knowledge; and f ) Help to develop appropriate attitudes towards the course materials, the institute, and one’s own needs and activities.

Submission Density is a notion that indicates the relationship between the length of a course, be it in terms of pages or study hours, and the number of assignments that are to be worked through by a learner when on the course. For a given course, the larger the number of assignments to be worked through, the higher the “submission density” in that course. For example, if a particular course consists of four study units, each with one assignment, then the submission density is 4. Now, if the same course has eight assignments, the submission density will be 8, and if the course has sixteen assignments, its submission density will be 16.

There are some research studies which uphold this view, but, then, there are studies which do not support it. However, by and large, the distance learner, the distance institutions, and the distance teachers agree that the two-way communication generated by the work on assignments helps the learners in many ways: i) Studies become more stimulating; ii) Studies are better organized as the courses get divided appropriately; iii) Learners are introduced to each other in the course; iv) Learners build a closer acquaintance with the institution; v) Learners are corrected where they might have gone wrong; vi) Learning is reinforced through encouragement; vii) Learning is applied to find out the solution of real and/or hypothetical problems; viii) Significant parts of the course become clearly visible; and ix) Revision of the course becomes easier.

Tutorials: To inspire the learners individually, a distance teaching institution naturally arranges for tutorials. A tutorial, among other things, means a period of individual instruction given by a college tutor. This definition implies that: i) tutorials pertain to higher education (notice the use of the word ‘college’); and ii) the objective of a tutorial is to provide ‘individual’ instruction to the learners. Whether tutorials should be used only in the area of higher education is a question we are not interested in—we may use tutorials at lower levels of instruction too. What interests us is the  second implication, i.e. the purpose of a tutorial is to provide ‘individual instruction’.  Without going into the details of how and when the system of tutorials came in to being, we need to understand the importance of effective communication between the learner and the teacher. Effective communication is effected by: i) allowing more time for individual interaction with the teacher; ii) creating a more congenial academic atmosphere in which all types of learners find it convenient to express themselves; and iii) providing for close relationships among the learners on one hand and between the learners and the teacher on the other. 

The significance of these three processes can be appreciated better, if we look for structural and operational differences between the general academic processes that occur in a classroom and a tutorial. In a classroom situation the teacher addresses himself/herself to a group of 30 to 100 (in certain cases more than 100) learners, whereas a tutorial group may consist of about 10/12 learners. This basic difference between the two structures results in various operational differences between them. These are:  The classroom teacher addresses himself/herself to a hypothetical average learner. The actual learners may be of much higher and/or lower cognitive abilities than this average learner. In a tutorial, on the other hand, the teacher will have to address himself/herself to each individual learner by making appropriate adjustments with the cognitive abilities of the latter. And the tutors will have to be more tolerant in order to accommodate all types of learnerabilities.  Classroom teaching, in most cases, ends up as a process that is teacher-centered, (in general, learners remain passive most of the time) unidirectional (overt classroom interaction is neither possible nor usually encouraged), and impersonal (a teacher can not build personal relations with a large number of learners). The teaching and learning process in a tutorial can be learner-centered (if the teacher does not dominate the situation purposely), multidirectional (for every learner is made to contribute to the process) and intimate (as not only does the teacher come closer to learners, the learners also come closer to each other). 

Attitudinal problems which have their roots in learners’ and/or Interaction teachers’ biases, prejudices, inhibitions, idiosyncrasies, physical handicaps, up bringing or behavior, remain unresolved in classroom situations. But tutorial situations smooth out these problems to an appreciable extent.

What is obvious from the above analysis is that a tutorial ‘individualizes’ learning. On the one hand, it complements what is achieved in an impersonal way in the classroom situation, on the other; it also functions as a corrective operation. In distance education, the purpose of the classroom appears to be served by the study materials sent to the learners, and the purposes of the tutorial get served through the work on assignments. In fact, as each assignment has to be looked into as an individual academic exercise, the didactic conversation between the distance learner and the distance teacher is much more ‘individualized’ than the live tutorial can be.

4.5 Supplemental Interaction through E-mail Tools

What do you mean by Supplemental Communication ? What pedagogical purpose does it serve ?

Supplemental communication is an additional communication to both academic and personal communication. But it has its own importance in distance education context. This communication has nonetheless benefited learners a lot in various ways. It guides the learners in correct learning, clarifies doubts, supports to work on their shortcomings, and assists them in acquiring different skills. It suggests that communication can never be an end process if both parties do not have any desire to end it. 

This sort of communication may be initiated either by a learner or by a Tutor Comments tutor. Some learners wish to know why they have secured low grades in their assignment-responses. They react strongly to the comments written by the tutor on their assignment-responses. In this regard, learners wish to know about their positions from the tutor by clarifying the grades. When learners require previous question papers and their model answers for preparing for Term-End Examinations (TEE), then they can write to the tutors. When learners find difficulty in  solving/answering the previous question papers they may seek help from the tutor. On the distance teacher’s side, when he/she thinks that a particular model question is difficult to be answered by the learners, s/he can provide the model answers to it and make it available to all the learners. He/she can clarify learners’ objections towards the grades that they have received. These issues are considered as supplemental communication but are not limited to only these phenomena. Supplemental Communication also encompasses the large number of issues pertaining to the distance learners who are heterogeneous in character. 

From an operational point of view, all the queries raised by the learners in relation to their grades in their assignment-responses alert the tutor and do awake him/her to the task of giving justice to the task of distance teaching. It is both complex and challenging for a tutor to understand all learners and respond to their queries both from the academic point of view and from personal perspectives. To attend to these unique tasks, it is suggested that tutors should update themselves from time to time and act accordingly as the situation demands. All these possibilities are replicated as positive signs for the growth and progress of effective distance teaching-learning transaction. What are study skills ? Explain in brief the significance of study skills for distance learners. In what way does real communication supplement simulated communication in distance education ?

2.2.1 Role of a Classroom Teacher

A typical institute of face-to-face education where classroom teaching is an obvious phenomenon, textbooks alone do not have any impact on learning. Through classroom teacher’s active role, the content presented in the textbooks becomes the sheer knowledge of the student. A classroom teacher makes efforts on students’ learning when the knowledge transfer takes place from teacher to students (on many occasions from students to teachers also) through demonstration, explanation, and arguments on different issues. The physical presence of a teacher in the classroom, his/her smiles, elbow movements, eye contact with the students help them in the process of their transferring knowledge. Thus, in the classroom scenario both the teacher and the taught play major roles for learning to take place effectively. 

Highlighting the classroom teacher as an inspirer and holy guide for the students, and believing that they are the key for the transformation and transmission of knowledge to the students, a basic question crops up. If teaching in a classroom and physical presence of teacher were the only factors responsible for a learner’s success, then there should be no failures in the regular public examinations like matriculation, intermediate, etc.

This argument claims that the learner himself/herself is an important factor in the teaching-learning situation. Whatever means a teacher adopts for him/her to learn, it will fail if a learner does not want to learn. Thus, it is the learner who must take initiative in the teaching learning activities. When the learner has interest in learning, his/her capacity for learning, attitude to learning also play significant role in the mode of learning. It conveys that learning is primarily a learner centred activity where a learner can also learn in a distance situation. The classroom teacher is simply a facilitator who delivers content to students which is available in the textbooks. This does not bring any difference to learners if they wish to read and understand the materials by themselves with some sort of interaction with the tutors. This facility is available in the distance education setup. In this juncture, an important question may arise: Who would be a distance tutor?

2.2.2 Role of a Distance Tutor

As it has been explained above, a distance tutor does more than a classroom teacher does in the face-to-face educational institutions. A classroom teacher assists learners in going through the relevant materials in relation to the discussion that took place orally in the classroom. The materials referred to the students will be available in library or accessible by browsing internet resources. In a nut-shell, a classroom teacher helps learners to go through the written materials by informing them where these are available. A distance teacher does the same but in different ways. He/she guides the students not through the ‘word of mouth’ but through ‘word of hand’ (i.e writing comments on learners’ assignment responses). Thus, at the theoretical or ground level, there are resemblances between a classroom teacher and his/her counterpart at the distance teaching institution. This resemblance may not be prominent if we consider the level of performance. This is so because their modes of operation are not the same. A classroom Tutor Comments teacher, by implication, discusses, delivers, and talks to the students on the study content. Hence, it is claimed that he/she may guide, inspire, and help learners in their learning activities. On the contrary, though these situations do not occur often, it is evident that a distance teacher who works through assignment-responses may choose even not to write any comments or replies at all.

In this context, the most important issue is, if a distance teacher wishes to help the learner, he/she should not only give the grades at the top of assignment responses but also communicate his comments corresponding to the course-units to the learners. The distance teacher who just gives the grades and does not write any comments on the assignment-responses would be called as a mere examiner but not a distance teacher.

There are innumerable situations where distance teachers handle assignment responses without giving proper attention and devotion which should be expected from them. The possible reasons for such incidents are: i) The teacher may not be liking his/her work but forcefully or hesitantly does the task under some obligation. ii) He/she does not read the assignment responses but grades them, just to maintain the record that he/she has done his/her duty. iii) He/she reads the assignment responses but has no time to write the comments on it. iv) He/she may not be knowing the significance of comments in pedagogic perspectives. v) He/she does not know what to write in comments. vi) He/she is scared of writing any comments on assignment-responses because the write up may be criticised by other examiners. vii) He/she does not know the students personally, therefore writing comments on their assignment-responses may not be worthy. All these issues arise because in many cases, the distance teacher is seconded from the parent departments of face-to-face universities. The obvious solution would be, unwilling teachers should not be seconded for distance teaching nor should we appoint people who are not willing to undertake the tasks peculiar to distance teaching, such as evaluating the Term-End Examination (TEE) scripts and writing comments on assignment-responses. In some situations, a distance teacher is given many tasks to do at one go. Hence it is obvious that s/ he will be running short of time. Hence, writing comments on assignment responses may not be possible. This is an administrative problem which should be sincerely taken care of and a required number of staff should be deputed to carry out the office works.