WHAT IS A STUDY CENTRE?
The range of possible functions
A useful classification of the functions of study centres is as follows:
Administrative functions
The administrative functions of study centres may involve student affairs:
- publicizing study opportunities;
- informing and counselling individuals;
- enrolling and registration
- fee collection;
- maintaining records of students' status, progression, results, course forward planning, assignments traffic;
- explicating rules, academic and administrative regulations, ethos and mores of the parent institution;
- evaluation.
The administrative functions may involve handling study materials:
- reception, storage, packing/assembling, dispatch to or preparation for collection by students;
- maintaining stocks and records and estimating future needs
- financial accountability for any materials sold.
Administrative functions will include the proper management of the study centre's facilities:
- the fabric of the premises and the surrounds;
- furniture and equipment;
- expendable supplies of materials;
- power, water, communication supplies'
- personnel;
- safety, security and cleaning;
- financial management.
Academic functions
The academic functions of study centres may involve:
- counselling on general academic matters before enrolment and during the progress of study, sometimes involving detailed advice on individual subjects, and careers counselling;
- providing study skills advice and courses, arranging local teaching/tutoring, managing and monitoring it and student attendance, and assessing its cost-effectiveness;
- arranging for teaching visits of staff from the parent institution:
- the timetable, attendance of students;
- venues and equipment/materials;
- evaluation of cost effectiveness.
- organization of study space and facilities for students who need:
- quietness for private study;
- access to resources such as reference materials (text, audio, video, computer), equipment (scientific, audio, video);
- discussion with other students, informal or organized peer - tutorials.
- administering teaching in real time at a distance through:
- telephone (and/or satellite) links for sound only, sound and picture, sound and picture-and-interactive-computer screen transmissions;
- computer conferencing;
- television broadcasts, one-way or interactive.
- monitoring student progress during a study period and taking action to provide encouragement and support when necessary;
- organizing final examinations: venues, furniture and materials, supervision, security of papers and scripts, record keeping, dispatch of scripts for making;
- investigating local demand for non-credit/continuing education courses and activities (consistent with their higher education role and arranging to meet those wishes, including, when necessary, the financial management of the activities organized.
Social functions
Study centres may have a wide range of social functions prescribed by the parent institution, expected by the local community, engendered by the students using them, and arising inevitably because they are there.
Functions prescribed by the parent institution may include:
- mirroring the institution itself, providing a minicampus experience for users and reflecting the ethos, ambiance, expectations, of the main campus, thus contributing to the institutional socializing of the students;
- representing the parent institution locally at formal and informal functions;
- facilitating and organizing occasions relevant to its academic functions and those of its parent institution, such as
- meetings of alumni;
- meetings of students' associations;
- graduation and other award ceremonies;
- pre-orientation and orientation sessions for students, parent and friends;
- careers and guidance meetings.
- exhibiting, distributing and holding for reference materials publicizing and explaining the mission, organization, and opportunities offered by the parent institution;
- disseminating to students and others, news of centre and campus activities.
The local community may have expectations of the ways in which a study centre might function socially. It may serve to reduce the mystique of higher education study through its use by many and varied people. It may be viewed as a comfortably normal venue for all sorts of purposes from using its reference library, to meeting for tea or coffee at its canteen, to attending monthly meetings of clubs and societies in its classrooms. In this way a centre may make a valuable contribution to the democratizing of higher education.
The student-users of a study centre may initiate a variety of "social" uses of its facilities if they are allowed and encouraged. They may form a local association or union for mutual support and to represent their views to the institution. They may hold peer-tutorials and less formal, mutual, academic support meetings at the centre. They may be led to regard it as their "club" where serious academic pursuits may intermingle with informal socializing.
The range of architectural types
A study centre may consist of one room in a building that is only occasionally staffed, or it may be a campus with a number of purpose-designed buildings, permanently staffed for specialist teaching, technical, and administrative purposes, and open most days and times during the week. Its physical form will depend on the functions ascribed to it and on the funds available to provide for those functions at various levels of completeness and intensity.
The centre may be a "lodger" within the premises of another institution's facility possibly paying rent to cover space used, furniture and fittings provided, and power etc. consumed. Examples of centres of this sort are those of the University College of Southern Queensland which are located within colleges of the Technical and Further Education system of Australia, and those of the Indira Gandhi National Open University (Anjanappa, 1989). The University College of Southern Queensland has other centres which were integrally planned within a specially built multi-purpose educational complex. Such a study centre is found at the Hervey Bay Senior College which was planned and developed as a general post-secondary, community education facility. A similar example is the University of the South Pacific's regional centre in Tonga which is being integrated into the Tongan Community College, another purpose-built complex of multi-function.
Some study centres occupy discrete buildings of an inexpensive, adapted architectural form. Thus the University of the South Pacific's centre in Nauru is a former civil service staff house, built of wood and having three small "bedrooms", "living-room" and "kitchen". Other centres represent ambitious, sophisticated, costly, and architecturally designed adaptations of existing buildings such as those of North Island College, Canada (Salter, 1982), or purpose-built mini-campuses such as the University of the South Pacific Centre, Vanuatu.
Many centres are of modest provision and architectural design reflecting their role, the population they serve, and the funds available for their construction and development. The Antigua Centre of the University of the West lndies is such a pleasant, functional, facility, as are the U.S.P. centres in Solomon Islands, Kiribati, and Tuvalu, the University of Papua New Guinea's centre on Bouganville, and the fourteen regional/study centres of the Open University of Sri Lanka.
An interesting species of study centre having functions similar in range to those already mentioned but very different in physical nature, are the mobile centres of North Island College (Salter, 1982). This is an interesting response to the needs of distance learning students for support in an area of scattered population which is mainly nucleated but where travel to study centres in the larger urban areas is difficult.
The range of staffing/management arrangements
Staffing
It follows almost axiomatically that study centres will exhibit a wide range of staffing phenomena. At one extreme is the single person, part-time, non-academic centre staff, and at the other a specialist team of academic, administrative and technical people, staffing the centre full-time, mornings, afternoons and evenings, six or seven days of every week, with some in senior academic and managerial positions and others in clerical and labouring support jobs.
Some centres may be staffed by persons contracted to do so from members of a host institution by the centres' parent institution. This is how the University College of Southern Queensland runs its centre in the Chinese University of Hong Kong. The Open Learning Institute of British Columbia has centres staffed by an advisor and a half-or full-time clerical assistant according to need (Meakin, 1982). In contrast to this the "larger" centres of the University of the South Pacific, such as those in Solomon Islands and Tonga, leave two or three academic staff at Lecturer or Senior Lecturer level, secretaries/administrative officers, librarians, a technician/satellite operator, clerical support staff, cleaners and groundsmen. Similar strength of staffing is found in the centres of the Indira Gandhi Open University and the Open University of Sri Lanka.
In both of the last two institutions mentioned staffing and management is somewhat complex because their larger regional centres have oversight of smaller satellite study centres. Similar development on a lesser scale occurs when an institution seeks to serve smaller communities at some distance from its study centres through the establishment of local coordinators. Such is the case at the University of the South Pacific and the Canadian Open Learning Institute through the use of their part-time advisors, sometimes working out of their own homes (Meakin 1982).
Management
The ways in which study centres are managed constitute a continuum from complete direction from the main campus of the parent institution at the one end, to centres having considerable autonomy in many areas of activity at the other. There may be tight central control of some aspects of the work of centres and great room for local initiative in others. Even the funding Of study centres may underscore this dichotomy as in the case of the University of the South Pacific whose regional centres have two financial accounts. One is subject to university regulation and auditing, and the other is administered by the directors of the centres and subject to the oversight of the centres' advisory committees (made up of local persons). The latter accounts are relatively small but may be augmented considerably by local initiatives of the centre staff, by local gifts, and by annual donation from overseas aid sources.
It is through the use of that second account that the University of the South Pacific centres have been able to undertake much useful and exciting continuing education work, reviewing and stimulating traditional arts and crafts, encouraging and tutoring indigenous writers, poets, musicians, as well as running courses in contemporary studies and skills. These activities are managed almost exclusively by the centres though they have been strongly supported by the Director of Extension Services of the University.
The staff of study centres are invariably considered to be an integral part of the staff of the parent institution, enjoying the same rankings, prestige, and remuneration and employment conditions as those on campus. Thus their qualifications and professional behavior can be expected to provide for the communities within which they work the image of the institution as determined by the institution.
Each centre has a head who is responsible for the management of all of the centre's functions and all aspects of its well-being within the rules, regulations and procedures laid down by the institution or body employing that person. An important aspect of the head's task is to maintain effective communications with that controlling body. In some distance education systems communications between centres may be important also for collaborative projects, mutual assistance (for example when students move from the area served by one centre to that of another, or to supply materials in stock in one centre and short in another), and to allow for collegiate decision-making.
The range of study centre systems
It is apparent that study centres are expressions of a distance education communication system instituted for the support of students. Each centre is linked upwards with the institution which gives it meaning and at least some degree of governance and direction. The simplest system of study centres therefore is expressed in the diagram below in which each centre, A, B, and C, is linked directly and only with the parent institution.
Main Campus
Centre A
Centre B
Centre C
Diagram 2.1
For administrative purposes, this is the configuration of the UCSQ study centre system.
For teletutorials however, all centres with attending students are networked and the UCSQ system is then as in the diagram below.
Main Campus
Centre A
Centre B
Centre C
Diagram 2.2
Diagram 2.2 illustrates the normal configuration of the network of nine study centres and two main campuses of the University of the South Pacific for administrative, academic, and social purposes.
A third pattern comes from the inclusion of sub-centres (or of "study centres" vis a vis "regional centres" in the case of the Indira Gandhi Open University for example). The configuration of the network may then vary according to the nature of the communication. For administrative matters it may appear thus:
Main Campus
Centre A
Centre B
Centre C
Sub C.A1
Sub C.C1
Sub C.C2
Sub C.C3
Diagram 2.3
For academic purposes, such as utilizing telecommunications for teaching/tutoring, or for teleconferencing, such as staff discussions of institute issues, complete point to multi-point networking may be possible (Diagram 2.4).
Main Campus
Centre A
Centre B
Centre C
A1
C1
C2
C3
Diagram 2.4
Main Campus A
Main Campus B
Centre A
Centre B
Centre C
centre D
Diagram 2.5
A further complication will occur in cases where the study centres serve more than one parent institution. However, unless there is collaboration between the institutions, for all intents and purposes, the two or more systems may co-exist and yet have no relationship to one another in practical terms (Diagram 2.5).
In case of rationalization and sharing of teaching (at a distance and involving centres' handling of study materials and administering tutorials/classes), then the point-to-multipoint networking may be advantageous or necessary (Diagram 2.6).
Main Campus A
Main Campus B
Centre A
Centre B
Centre C
centre D
Diagram 2.6
Such a study centre system configuration is becoming more likely for the near future in Australia following the beginning of the rationalization of distance education provision in 1989.
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