Examples of study centre types
Many distance teaching institutions consider that a comprehensive system of decentralized student support is a vital component of their teaching strategies. The Open University, UK, has for instance a network of 260 regional study centres staffed with tutors, counsellors administrators and containing a wide variety of educational facilities (Sewart, 1981). The OU-UK model has influenced many institutions, but few have adopted the model without modifications.
Australia
In Australia distance teaching institutions show a wide divergence in their commitment to study centres. There is no shared philosophy about student support and each institution has gone its own way. In New South Wales and South Australia, institutions emphasize direct interaction between teachers and students and scarcely use study centres. In Tasmania and the Northern Territory, study centres act as brokers for all distance teaching institutions in which local residents might be enrolled. These centres act as information and access centres as well as offering locations for some tutorial support, particularly for residential school needs.
In Western Australia, 70 per cent of the students live in the capital city and have access to one or more tertiary institutions. The remainder of the population is so widely spread and isolated as to make a study centre network extremely expensive and not a viable proposition. Telecommunications is seen as the logical and most efficient means of providing student support, in conjunction with a system of access centres to provide advice and counselling for those interested in tertiary education.
In Queensland a regional network of some of study centres exists, often shared by a number of institutions. Such a network has been in operation since 1949. Recently, the Queensland government has encouraged its educational institutions to set up regional campuses to deliver face-to-face tuition. In 1989 it provided a $1 million grant to set up a network of 40 regional Open Learning Centres to act as educational brokers and support for enrolled students.
Victorian institutions vary in their use of study centres. Deakin University uses them for reference centres while the TAFE network uses theirs for academic as well as administrative activities. The TAFE centres have a high degree of autonomy in that they deliver and monitor distance learning courses locally, with only loose liaison and co-ordination between them.
Academic collaboration between distance teaching institutions has also meant that institutions act as study centres for one another. Australian study centres serve a number of institutional functions:
- establishing a focus and presence for higher education in rural or isolated communities;
- providing facilities and a location for enrolled students to pursue educational activities, from face-to-face tuition by visiting lecturers to solo research and study;
- setting up a mini-campus where face-to-face tuition is occasionally supplemented with distance learning;
- acting as an educational broker for many distance education institutions;
- providing a liaison for graduates and professionals who wish to maintain a continuing involvement in higher education;
- encouraging the collegiality which is often missing for distance learning students, by providing a welcoming venue where they can meet and socialize with others doing similar studies;
- in the satellite campuses and the more autonomous study centres, some of the institutions' centralized functions can occur. For example: recruitment of local tutors, staff development activities, production and distribution of some study materials, classes in study skills, student surveys, marking of assignments and examinations, feedback to students, classes and tutorials, autonomy in financial management, integration with face-to-face tuition, entrepreneurial activities, etc.
In general Australian institutions set up study centres in three ways:
- build a facility designed for the exclusive purpose of being a study centre;
- rent of lease commercial or other premises, and redesign them for the purpose;
- use space in an existing facility that already has one or more educational, commercial or community purposes.
A study centre may be for the sole use of students of one institution, it may be shared with one or more institutions (who contribute to the costs), or it may be a government (or other) funded access centre that acts as a broker for all institutions. In Australia there are very few purpose-built study centres. Many are rented and redesigned premises, but the majority are shared, multipurpose facilities, the study centre being a secondary user of a primary educational facility.
Canada
Similar to Australia, distance teaching institutions in Canada have adopted a wide variety of responses to providing external students with local support through study centres.
Great Britain
The British Open University has set up some 260 regional study centres, using local colleges, schools or other educational establishments (Kirk, 1979). These centres are open weekday evenings and sometimes on weekends, providing a local contact place for enrolled students and their tutors/counsellors. However, students often use mail or telephone to contact their tutor, rather than attending the local study centre. This is particularly so in post-foundation studies. Open University students do not have direct and on-going contact with course writers on the central campus. The regional study centre, the local tutor/counsellor and other students thereby become a student's only possibility for contact and support.
Africa
In Botswana study centres were set up to provide quiet study facilities that most students were unable to find at home, and to provide local tuition to ensure that students who were having difficulty could be assisted before they dropped out of the course (Inquai, 1983). Existing secondary classrooms are used in the evenings and staffed by part-time tutors, markers and administrators who are often principals and secondary school staff.
In Nigeria the Open Studies Unit at the University of Lagos used existing educational facilities to set up its network of study centres (Olumide, 1977). In addition to tutoring, meeting and private study facilities, the study centre provide a location for laboratory, practical and residential school activities, as well as a distribution point for course materials and student assignments. The distribution activity is largely due to the need for security and an irregular postal service.
Zambia has tried to meet its need for secondary school teachers through distance education methods, providing student support through supervised study groups and evening radio broadcasts (Perraton, 1983). Supervised study groups meet during the day, usually at a primary school, though occasionally at a secondary school, where they are supervised and assisted (though not "taught").
This sort of study centre is often run more as part of the school than as an additional activity. Since these centres operate in school buildings out of hours, the only direct costs are those of supervision.
South West Africa Peoples' Organization has set up study centres for Namibian refugees in Angola and Zambia (Namibian Extension Unit, 1985). These centres are usually situated in Health and Education Centres and staffed by study group leaders who are students a few courses ahead. These in turn are supervised by part-time tutors and field supervisors. Study materials are distributed from the study centres, local tutors conduct lessons, and mark assignments and tests. Financial support comes from a number of governments and international bodies including the United Nations.
Japan
In Tokyo the University of the Air plans purpose-built study centres in each prefecture to provide facilities for teaching, examinations, viewing TV programmes, library research and counselling (University of the Air Foundation, 1982). Printed coursework is supported by study centre tuition and broadcast lessons on radio and TV. Such centres offer tuition in the afternoons, evenings and on weekends. Centres are staffed by a Director, and part- and full-time teaching and administrative staff. These study centres are financed by government grants and subsidies, with some additional revenue from student tuition fees.
University of the South Pacific
The U.S.P. belongs to and serves all independent countries: Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Niue, Solomon Islands, Tokelau, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, and Western Samoa. The University has a centre in each of those countries with the exception of Tokelau. A Tokelau Officer caring for university business with that country works out of the Western Samoa Centre.
Each of the regional centres represents the university in its country, provides administrative and academic services for the external students, organizes and runs non-credit, continuing education courses and activities for its own country, and is staffed and equipped as a study centre with library, audio-visual, study, and laboratory and workshop facilities.
Each centre has academic and support staff who are full members of the university staff, and recruits local tutors and markers acceptable to the respective teaching departments on campus. Some centres also employ local co-ordinators when there are economically viable nucleii of students remote from the centre.
All centres and the external studies section of the main university campus in Fiji, are linked point to multipoint for voice and electronic mail communications via Intelsat. This "USPNet" supports teletutorials, daily administrative traffic, and teleconferences for continuing education activities.
Examples of study centres
Table 1 lists the salient characteristics of study centres under physical, functional, and administrative categories. It indicates for a number of institutions of higher education (those known in some detail to the authors) which of those characteristics are exhibited by their study centres. It should be noted that not all of those ticked may be present in any of the study centres forming part of an institution's student support system, but that to the authors' best knowledge all of those ticked exist within that system. The variation between centres within one system is a function of the degree of decentralization and of permitted local initiative.
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