Alan TaitPro Vice-ChancellorProfessor of Distance Education and DevelopmentThe Open University

From Place to Virtual Space: Reconfiguring Student Support in Distance Education

AG-F Universität Hamburg, 2012

Three themes

• The development of student support at OU UK over last 40 years: a review

• The development of technologies that support this broad historical sweep: ‘disembedding the local’

• Change and continuities for the direction of student support for the future

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What is happening underneath the surface?

• Disembedding• Die Entbettung?

• ‘Lifting out of social relations from local contexts of interaction and their restructuring across indefinite spans of time-space’

Giddens (1991) The Consequences of Modernity

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Characteristics of Late Modernity

• Disembedding from local

• Longer historical sweep from oral to written cultures

• Role of mass communication

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Regions and NationsEngland1 London2 South (Oxford)3 South West (Bristol)4 West Midlands (Birmingham)5 East Midlands (Nottingham)6 East (Cambridge)7 Yorkshire (Leeds) 8 North West (Manchester) 9 North (Newcastle) 13 South East (East Grinstead)

10 Wales (Cardiff) 11 Scotland (Edinburgh) 12 Ireland (Belfast and Dublin)

13 OU Regions/Nations

Milton Keynes (HQ) 6

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Locations

* Please note that these are part of the same CST

The vision for the student experienceFor students•Coherent, personal and targeted•Enable students to:

– achieve their study goals– achieve their personal and career development

goals– enhance their contribution to society

For students•Coherent, personal and targeted•Enable students to:

– achieve their study goals– achieve their personal and career development

goals– enhance their contribution to society

For the University•A reputation for access, quality and achievement •The first choice for students •A benchmark for other HEIs•Adapting and evolving, at the leading edge•Meeting recruitment, retention and completion targets

For the University•A reputation for access, quality and achievement •The first choice for students •A benchmark for other HEIs•Adapting and evolving, at the leading edge•Meeting recruitment, retention and completion targets

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Three main student support models• 1976-2000 Tutor-counsellor, embedded in local

study centre, plus tutor more or less local, plus Regional Centre staff

• 2000-2012 Tutor, more or less local, plus Regional Centre Advisory staff

• 2013 - Curriculum Support Team on national basis, plus tutor more or less local

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Curriculum Support Teams

• Serves curriculum programme for all territories

• Move away from geography to subject focus an ongoing principle

• Multi-disciplinary for professional perspective

• Cheaper division of labour of +40 years

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An ancient Egyptian table calculating the number of sacrifices made of a particular type over the course of a specified period. 3000 BC

Ration record from Babylon dating to the years 594–569 BC

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1955

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What else is new?

• Ability to make learners responsible for sourcing (some) material

• Capacity for peer and collaborative work• Richness of learning with multi-media• In industrial centre-periphery open universities, ability of

central staff to engage continuously with students• Ability to deliver near-constant updating of learning

materials

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Continuities

• Cognitive/affective/systemic dimensions to student support (Tait 2000)

• Support to students to achieve their goals

Overall• Student as subject not object• Values which drive• and politics which negotiate choices for policy

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Geological sense of development

• Layers added to layers

• Still visible

• Some fossils!

• What do we take out?

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Disembedding: a characteristic of late modernity

‘Lifting out of social relations from local contexts of interaction and their restructuring across indefinite spans of time-space’

Giddens (1991) The Consequences of Modernity

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Disembedding

• Distancing from location and physical presence

• Escape from context

• Changes nature of human experience

• Key to social mobility

• From or with community?

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WORLD INTERNET USAGE AND POPULATION STATISTICSDecember 31, 2011

World RegionsPopulation( 2011 Est.)

Internet UsersDec. 31, 2000

Internet Users

Latest Data

Penetration(%

Population)

Growth2000-2011

Users %of Table

Africa 1,037,524,058 4,514,400 139,875,242 13.5 % 2,988.4 % 6.2 %

Asia 3,879,740,877 114,304,000 1,016,799,076 26.2 % 789.6 % 44.8 %

Europe 816,426,346 105,096,093 500,723,686 61.3 % 376.4 % 22.1 %

Middle East 216,258,843 3,284,800 77,020,995 35.6 % 2,244.8 % 3.4 %

North America 347,394,870 108,096,800 273,067,546 78.6 % 152.6 % 12.0 %

Latin America / Carib. 597,283,165 18,068,919 235,819,740 39.5 % 1,205.1 % 10.4 %

Oceania / Australia 35,426,995 7,620,480 23,927,457 67.5 % 214.0 % 1.1 %

WORLD TOTAL 6,930,055,154 360,985,492 2,267,233,742 32.7 % 528.1 % 100.0

Internet World Stats http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm

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What are principles for student support for the future?

• Essential role in pedagogy model, and student achievement

• Safe to assume that all relevant communities live at ease with disembedded educational systems?

• Obligation to develop paths out of local to disembedded worlds

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Our obligations as educators?

• Disembedding is independent of educational systems

• We must reflect it

• We must help our students engage and do well with it

• We must exploit its affordances

• We must acknowledge its challenges

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Vielen Dank!

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