Exploring student support services of a distance learning centre at a Namibian university

Abstract

Effective student support services (SSS) are a vital means of enabling students to cope with the academic and personal pressures of distance education. This research explored the implementation of SSS at eight regional centres of the Namibia University of Science and Technology, in order to identify the challenges experienced and determine students’ needs. It adopted a mixed methods approach and used a questionnaire to collect data from 109 students and semi-structured interviews for textual data from eight regional coordinators (RCs). The findings indicate that most students opt for distance education because it allows them to work and study at the same time. However, many of them take longer to obtain qualifications due to high failure and repetition rates. This could be linked to a shortage of resources and their underutilization by students, lack of collaboration between marker-tutors and lecturers, and poor attendance of tutorial classes by students and lecturers/tutors. The research proposes a model for effective implementation of SSS in order to improve students’ academic experience and success rate.

Keywords

• distance education
• dropout rates
• student support services
• regional centres