Artifact 5 – Tutoring and Student Support in Distance Education and Training

Course Overview

MDDE 650 Tutoring and Student Support in Distance Education and Training provide a wealth of knowledge about student support in distance education. In assignment 2, I analyzed and compared two educational institutes’ academic and non-academic student support systems. I selected and investigated two colleges in the province of British Columbia to have a finer comparison. I acknowledged the strengths and weaknesses of each institution and finally provided realistic recommendations for the school administrators and students to improve student support in both colleges.

Pandemic Effects

Online and distance education is very likely the fastest-growing area of education in the world today. After the covid pandemic, the concept of accepting distance education has been changed by many authorities. For example, WorkBC which used to approve training funding for only in-person training programs now authorizes funding for both virtual and physical learning modes. On the other hand, people who resisted using digital applications were forced by nature to learn to use them. Now it is the job of the website designers and instructional designers to create a user-friendly digital environment to accommodate smooth learning or application for users (what).

As a facilitator and instructor, learning a systemic approach to student support was very insightful for me because my goal has always been to provide a quality learning experience for my learner audience (why). Doing this assignment, I started my analysis based on the combination of two approaches from two scholars in the field of education. I created a table based on Simpson (2012) criteria of student support as academic and non-academic. I learned academic (or tutorial) support deals with supporting students with the cognitive, intellectual, and knowledge issues of specific courses, and non-academic or counselling support deals with supporting students in the emotional and organizational aspects of their studies (what). While considering this categorization, I incorporated Crawley’s (2012) classification of student support into the table, and I tried to address his criteria as the administration service suite, academic service suite, personal service suite, and communication suite under the academic and non-academic classification.

In the next phase of the assignment, I investigated both colleges’ websites assessing each criterion in my list. Doing this analysis, expanded my vision of the importance of student support from the lens of an instructor and a student. To verify the availability of each criterion on the list, I had to navigate the website thoroughly to find the information. Or sometimes I had to call the school as a potential student and ask for services. Doing this helped me to have a more realistic list of student support services in both colleges. I provided the list of student support services for each college as part of this assignment. (how). (1.6, 1.9, 5.8).

My passion has always been teaching and creating online courses. This assignment provided a wealth of information that I can incorporate into my existing knowledge of instructional design. By comparing the two schools, I realized the importance of audience inclusivity on the home page of the website in terms of including a special tab for indigenous students, international students, distance education, and accessibility services (how).

I learned the importance of communication suites for creating a successful online course. I learned for creating a successful online course, I need to make sure the receiver understands the message just as I intended it to be understood. To reach this goal, I learned to use multimedia communication as using text, graphics, audio files, video, music, photos, and/or animation. Combining knowledge of video and audio creation from MDDE 610 has also prepared me for creating quality courses (why).

The experience from this assignment taught me that sometimes online course designers are caught up with doing their job as web designers and they forget to review the product through the lens of an audience. For example, during the process of critical analysis for one of the college’s websites, I noticed each program page, provides comprehensive information about the course, fees, etc. However, there was not any button for “Apply Now”. Instead, there was a separate button on the home page to apply for programs which makes the route complicated for the audience to figure out. Therefore, the result of this investigation practically taught me the importance of the evaluation phase and collecting feedback from professionals (how). (2.2, 3.1, 3.5).

My Takeaway

Learning the strategic approach to student support regarding Crawley and Simpson’s classifications was the biggest takeaway of this course and assignment 2 for me. In order to complete my assignment, I combined these two classifications into a table which I will use for my future reference and inside me, I felt I learned practical transferable skills. The knowledge I gained in this assignment empowered me to contribute to my workplace and provide constructive feedback to the learning team (why). (1.13).

My Aha Moment

As a result of this learning episode and creating my checklist for analyzing student support in distance education, I was able to notice the difference between the application of some simple tools for creating a more user-friendly quality website. While doing this investigation, as a potential applicant there were times, I got confused searching the website because the website lacked a section for “Frequently Asked Questions”, an “Apply Now” button, “Orientation Session”, and a clear “Fees Table”.

There is a perception that budget is the most important factor in producing quality online courses. However, this assignment proved to me that it is not always the case. Instead, incorporating the criteria into the website of a college does not necessarily involve allocating a huge budget to the cost of the website design. The above-mentioned weaknesses could be addressed with a simple redesign plan (why). (4.7).