Thorpe (2001) draws clear distinctions between the types of support required by Open and Distance Learning (ODL) students and those traditionally provided within face-to-face contexts. Here I concur with her view that it is not the role of ODL support system to try to replicate or somehow ‘robotise’ a personal tutor.

Many of my solutions go some way to substitute for the “environmental support” of the campus – the notice boards, the lecture schedule – and could be said to provide distributed substitutes for these. Most, however, aim to maximize the benefit of features I consider unique to on-line learning – such as the peer group discussions that can be revisited and stored, or the fact that learning takes place out in the real world of work and families in ways that promote critical reflection.

In designing course activities for the Masters Distance Learning programme in Infectious Diseases (ID) at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), I argued that the development of a ‘criss-crossed landscape’ of learning, using Web-delivery of course resources reinforced with active conferencing, would have clear benefits for the major stake-holders on the programme.

The design responded to concerns of students in providing increased contact with tutors and greater opportunities for formative assessment. Conference activities and web-based research are being designed to enable and accelerate the development of core work-related deliverables. Key to the design principles was increasing the transferability of skills acquired by working across and through different discipline areas in order to solve problems or come up with disease management proposals.

While the course design will have limited impact on existing infrastructure and technical support systems at the institution, it will have much greater impact on the demands made of both learners and tutors, and initial responses to the innovations involved are not easy to predict.

The success of LSHTM’s use of computer-mediated conferencing (CMC), and attendant benefits of building conference outputs into a rich library of case studies on multiple facets of disease and health management, can be said greatly to depend on the effective support of learners and tutors.

I have designed the support elements proposed here on a framework of flexible cognition, which is based on constructivism, and particularly suited to complex areas of study such as medicine (TIP website).

I have concentrated support provision on those elements of Thorpe’s (2002) structure to do with the management of conflicts, relating the learning to local contexts and experience, challenging course viewpoints and negotiating assessment.

The myth of the independent learner

“No news is not good news”

Freeman, 1997

Currently LSHTM deliberately excludes ‘non-academic’ support from its offering to students in pre-enrolment materials; the FAQ web site states that students have only an academic, not a personal tutor (LSHTM, 2002a). Such statements clearly serve in part to manage learner expectations along the lines discussed by MacKeogh and Stevenson (2001) and to exert a continuing self censorship effect on students:

They don’t promise what they can’t deliver and ensure that they do deliver what they promise

Boulding et al, 1993

Lisa Schoening (15 June, 2003, H804br277 03 TMA04) points out that in the USA, the phrase ‘tutorial/ counseling/ mentoring support’ is generally used to mean ‘remedial academic help’. I plan to work within the definitions of scope for learner support implied by these definitions and do not propose to attempt major changes to this approach; I feel there would be cultural, cost and logistical barriers to doing so. Rather I propose two key ‘product enhancements’:

– better amplification for students of what is meant by ‘academic support’; and

– greater use of external support structures including workplace mentors to enhance that ‘academic’ input

Learner support thus defined becomes both a learner need and a tutorial duty – it should facilitate an enhancement of learning and offer greater transferability of skills and knowledge. Both the nature of the course and the profile of the learners drive the need for strong academic performance and transferability of the learning. The course itself, because it is highly oriented to a specific working practice, has a syllabus unique in distance education and covers areas of vital relevance to world health issues. The learners are already sophisticated and experienced students, predominantly working practically in the field, are crucial health educators themselves, have high commitment levels and intrinsic motivations, and demand job relevance (Alsford, 2003).

While the learner group has complained of feelings of isolation (Alsford, 2003), this has generally been couched in cognitive rather than affective terms; they are concerned with the effect this has had on their learning or examination success rather than on their enjoyment of the study experience.

In other words, this is a group at very low risk of developing ‘dependency’ on tutors’ contributions (Mason, 2001). I would suggest that these learners perceive themselves as highly independent – or at least as very adept at managing their dependencies. The aim, therefore, of a support system for such a course and learner profile, should be to manage learner interdependence in productive ways. This is a view grounded in constructivism and cognitive flexibility theory (CFT). It argues that as human beings we function always and only as interdependent beings in material, social and cultural networks.

A typical learning environment based on CFT presents multiple perspectives, is complex and ill-defined, and emphasizes the construction of knowledge by the learner. A support system for such a learning environment, it follows, is less concerned than most with the resolution of conflicts since it can be argued that it is at points of conflict that learning, especially what Engeström terms ‘expansive’ learning, happens.

"Disturbances" can be viewed as inner contradictions, the driving force of change and development in activity systems

Engeström,1997

Engeström sees contradiction as the way to generate new as opposed to merely re-cycled knowledge (Guile and Young,1998). Jonassen and Rohrer-Murphy (1999) argue that these contradictions can and should be designed into constructive learning environments (CLEs). The environment should include all technologies contributing to real world decision making for the group (providing an ‘ill-defined context’). The ‘noise’ of peripheral activities should impinge on the ‘problem space’ of a CLE, such as conversational areas, multiple representations of content and related cases. The idea is that the CLE “replicates the tools, the object, the community, the rules and division of labour of the activity system”.

Of course this is an impossible demand – no on-line environment however rich can bring in all the ‘noise’ of local contexts. But learner support systems, by involving learners’ colleagues and contexts, can serve to invite more of it in. In this way, learner support systems can be managed to help with the ‘designing in’ of transferable learning. Guile and Young (1998) make strong recommendations to look outside the immediate community, avoiding the quick fixes that offer themselves, and to ‘bring in’ contradictions and the ‘non-core’, retaining:

a role for concepts and learning technologies that are external to an organisation’s existing culture and environment.

By pro-actively addressing such support ‘issues’ as the conflicting assessments of work place sponsors, new issues can be brought into the course that would otherwise remain ’outside’. To re-phrase Freeman (1997), “no conflict is not good news”.

Support needs

LSHTM learners are working in a complex environment, continually negotiating with the hindrance and support, the limitations and affordances, offered by:

– Their local situation and contexts

– Logistical and resource factors

– Technologies

– Workplaces and colleagues

– Families and friends

– ‘Personal’ - affective and attitudinal - issues

Many relish this:

Still others feel not enough is made of their local context within the course. It is my view that such conflicts can be harnessed in order to enhance learning experiences. The exploration of conflicts can support learning, and as Lisa Schoening argues (15 June, 2003, H804br277 03 TMA04), the achievement on-line of a fuller ‘social presence’ that reflects these conflicts can help achieve learning outcomes.

This section discusses the following improvement areas where the support programme can deliver benefits:

– Learner perseverance

– Building on-line learning skills

– Negotiating access to ICTs

– Producing academic deliverables

– Self-scheduling

– Developing viewpoints and approaches via challenge and conflicts

Learner perseverance

Various studies have established that retention rates are influenced by complex factors, but that student acquisition procedures and support systems are key (Lockwood 1995, pp.70, 222). Regarding drop-out rates, the University of London’s Head of Registry Jonathan Seddon (personal communication) notes:

This is quite a difficult question because very few students specifically withdraw from the programme. Most will allow their registration to lapse without having entered examinations.

The table below represents students registered for 1998 and 1999 who have either withdrawn from the programme, or have not sat examinations or returned continuing registration forms during this period.

Table 1: an indication of non-completion rates

Course	Total registrations 1998	Withdrawn/ not completed / not sat examinations

MSc ID	55	16 (29%)

PG Dip	11	3 (27%)

Course	Total registrations 1999	Withdrawn/ not completed / not sat examinations

MSc ID	39	11 (28%)

PG Dip	15	4 (27%)

This is such a lagging indicator that it may have little to tell us about the current support programme. LSHTM would appear to be taking care over student acquisition providing information on whom the course is suited for – although these materials could certainly be made more interactive or ‘transactional’ (LSHTM, 2002b). It may well be that there is a residual drop-out rate (possibly as much as 20%) which nothing can be done about. However with these provisos it is clear that there is a need for increased learner support ‘firepower’, and particularly so given that much in the proposed course design will be new.

Building on-line learning skills

While learner attitudes to e-learning in the Learner Survey were shown to be positive and flexible (Alsford, 2003), support will certainly be required at a pragmatic level. The Learner Survey (Alsford 2003) indicated that engaging in web-based conferencing is new in itself for the vast majority of students who will need to be supported to develop proficiency. The 2003 cohort of students on the Open University (UK) Masters-level course Implementation of Open and Distance Education itemized several relevant issues relating to ‘learning from new media’; those considered important for this learner group are itemized below (for a full summary see Tim Thornett, June 08, 2003, H804br27703 Group Two).

Negotiating access to ICTs

Most LSHTM students use ICTs in the workplace for study at least some of the time (see Table 2) which raises practical issues regarding permissions and the setting up of work-based machines with additional software (Tim Thornett, June 08, 2003, H804br27703 Group Two).

Table 2: Student levels of access to ICTs (hours per week) and location

Producing academic deliverables

Essay writing has already proved an issue for some LSHTM learners (see text box below). The new course activities make increased demands on students to develop deliverables other than essays (such as an evaluation of a given health care intervention or disease management guidelines) to possibly ‘foreign’ structures and conventions, in line with recommendations from (for example) Klemm and Snell (1996):

…Students should DO something; i.e., produce an academic deliverable. Such deliverables can include making (and defending) a decision, creating (and defending) a prioritized list, formulating a question/thesis/problem, answering a question or solving a problem, preparing a report/proposal/plan, designing a prototype, or conducting a project.

There are likely to be increased support needs here too, particularly for access to models of course deliverables, for templates, toolkits and accelerators for the production of standard reports, and for coaching in how to use these.

Self-scheduling

Many ID students struggle already with issues of self-pacing. Such issues stand to increase as learners are encouraged to contribute to virtual conferences at specific points on the course.

Developing viewpoints and approaches via challenge and conflicts

The new course activities ask students to cope with a learning environment that deliberately sets up conflicts, whether in CMC debates, or through oppositional role-playing in WebQuests (Dodge, 1995). In addition, the support programme invites in other sources of challenge and dissent in the form of workplace mentors (see below). While the learner group is sophisticated, with many already having a second degree or post-graduate qualification, this approach will be new and unsettling to those for whom transactional/ transformational models of learning, developed in large part in workplaces in the developed world, are unfamiliar (Morgan and Smit, 2001). Some LSHTM students will need to be supported through their cultural issues with the conventions of on-line debate in a predominantly Anglo-Saxon environment, where they are used to being more or less confrontational or formal in discussion.

Implications

Much of this more pragmatic support will be provided as ‘distributed’ support (Lewis, 1995; p.244) in printed or CD-Rom format, or via model answers.

Other aspects of changes to the units require deeper levels of change, are less purely cognitive. There will be support needs not directly related to technologies and resources but to balancing individual and collaborative work, synchronized examination schedules with asynchronous conferencing – rather as Susan Smith describes issues relating to the ‘natural lull’ after each assessment deadline on H804 (Susan Smith 3, May 24, 2003, H804br27703 Group One).

Such ‘softer’ support issues include learning to learn from peers, or indeed leaning to see themselves as a resource for others (Tim Thornett, June 03, 2002, H804br27703 Group Two) – which requires of them what Burge (1995) has called ‘learning to think aloud’ and challenge course viewpoints. Finally to accept formative assessment from mentors and tutors on deliverables, learners will need to be helped to build motivations other than the extrinsic desire for top grades. These require modeling behaviours rather than model answers, and both are outlined in more detail in the following section.

Who provides support, and how?

The contributions of the following people and elements are outlined in this section:

– Workplace mentors

– Peers

– Tutors

– Infrastructure and assessment

Workplace mentors

Thorpe (1995) describes a transition by which:

learners move from a starting point in everyday language to a point where they are using the language of a discipline with confidence.

In fact, in a learning environment founded on the principles of CFT, it is not necessarily desirable that learners make this transition too completely or too smoothly, but that instead the course language or narrative is regularly challenged or subverted by those from other contexts, disciplines or perspectives. Mentors have a key role to play in supporting this interplay.

Morgan and Smit (2001) describe the mentoring practices of workplace, project-based learning as transformational, and question why this rich resource is not normally harnessed in ODL. The benefits for learners are clear from the point of view of building in knowledge transfer; a mentor who stands somewhat apart from the course discourse can help add to the perspectives present on the course and introduce elements of dialogue and challenge to otherwise rather ‘one-way’ course materials (Evans and Nation, 1989; Morgan, 1993). Learners can also test ideas in ‘safe’, non-assessed environments. For Panda and Jena (2001, p.175), working in the very different environment of hospital practice in India, both learning performance and the transfer of skills learnt to health practice have been facilitated by repeated practice in different project environments, where mentoring becomes:

A process of negotiation of meaning and adoption of practices that were locally-based and sometimes patient-based

Panda and Jena, 2001; p.176

Hospital doctors here became ‘counsellor-mentors’ with a distinct bias towards academic support and thus could serve as a useful model for the LSHTM support programme. Mentors on the LSHTM programme should be approached for feedback on assignments and the CMC deliverables such as reports and intervention analyses, and the assessment criteria of mentors will be explicitly compared to internal ones on the course.

Peers

Currently, LSHTM simply enables students to contact each other by circulating e-mail addresses. This is only patchily used, so peer to peer support remains informal (Lewis, 2001; pp. 245, 247). Since Oliver and McLoughlin note that “dialogue, interaction and collaboration around a computer produce better results that self-study at a computer” (2001; p.149), should be more proactively encouraged. A buddying system where students are paired up by a third party however risks involving tutors and/ or administrators in too much time-consuming research, getting the pairings wrong by substituting guess work, and possibly being seen as patronizing by some students. Instead, early conferences will be designed to share contexts and produce group deliverables to encourage learners to form productive ‘clusters’ themselves.

LSHTM’s existing distributed support materials such as FAQ pages are rather narrow of use compared to the possibilities of learner-to-learner interactions (Oliver and McCoughlin, 2001; p.152). Enablers less cumbersome than full blown electronic performance support systems (EPSS), but which allow genuine intra-learner debates, recommendations and problem-solving to be saved for reference from one cohort to the next - such as WebURL and WebFAQ – are to be assessed in a separate exercise at the School. The aim here is to develop what I am calling a ‘Peers Plus’ system – a searchable, peer-reviewed knowledge management database of last years issues, questions, summaries of on-line activities, and team-produced model deliverables.

Tutors

The increased access to tutors and better response times enabled by CMCs will represent a ‘quick win’ for the implementation:

Tutors will need to ‘model’ best CMC practice (Madeleine McGrath, May 31, 2003, H804br27703 Group Two), especially in the earlier conferences. Tutors will be encouraged to be explicit about their own academic and contextual biases, and develop an on-line personality and voice. This is important in a learning environment based on CFT, since it ‘places’ a representation in the landscape of multiple perspectives. They will also need to make their own assessment criteria explicit, so as to facilitate comparison with mentors’ evaluations.

Infrastructural elements

Some elements of support are already built into the new course specification. This applies in particular to the support required at pragmatic levels, including many of the issues that H804 students referred to as relating to ‘learning from new media’ (Madeleine McGrath, May 31, 2003, H804br27703 Group Two). Much of this will be provided as ‘distributed’ support (Lewis, 1995) in printed or CD-ROM format. Other elements will be incorporated as part of the infrastructure of course design, most importantly by:

– integrating “learning to learn on-line” components into the scaffolded activities;

– providing internet search guidelines, including pointers to specific subject area search engines, for download (Hilary Alsford, H804 BR 277 2003 Act 2, April 22 2003);

– the fact that WebBoard has been selected which the institution’s helpdesk already successfully supports;

– re-designing the existing wrap-around study guide (SG) to suggest pathways through content, time management help, re-orderings and re-mediations, and present different philosophies on the subject, rather than providing academic content;

– introducing more learner-content interactivity (Moore and Kearsley, 1996;pp.79;99;128-129) to pre-enrolment and enrolment materials (self-tests and questionnaires rather than a ‘flat’ FAQ page.

Supporting the supporters

Mentors

Given that ODL providers are only beginning to see the opportunities offered by work-place mentoring it is perhaps not surprising that, while Simpson (2002) is able to suggest ways (pp. 122-124) to pre-empt conflicts in the family by providing a leaflet on 'Supporting your student', he adds that there is as yet no such document for employers. Morgan and Smit recommend that guidelines be developed for the negotiation of the mentor-mentee relationship, and the role of the mentor. I would add that if mentors are to assess learner deliverables then they may need to be provided with (or – better – assist in the development of) assessment rubrics (Pickett and Dodge, 2001).

Such briefing documents – and, possibly more importantly, the attendant discussions and negotiations between mentee and mentor - will give someone besides the learner a vested interest in the success of the learning. Additionally, the process of selecting and discussing the course with a mentor will help the ID student see how far their studies are in fact aligned with the strategic objectives and values of local practice – and advance warning of conflicts to manage in this area.

Morgan and Smit (2001, p.163) demonstrate that this dialoque between theory and practice that so empowers the mentee can also develop the mentor; Panda and Jena note too that mentors themselves learnt about rural medical practices. To extend these benefits into wider health practice, forums for mentor-mentor networking (Panda and Jena, 2001, p.178) could be developed.

On a pragmatic level, course activities will need to involve mentors progressively (indeed, early activities could work on relationship building between mentor and mentee).

Peers

Peers’ involvement and regularity of input into the support system is difficult to guarantee. The cohorts on the ID programme work predominantly to their own pacing, and (apart from during examinations) will synchronise only for specific conferences and on-line activities. Tutors and course designers will need to be able to give advance notice of the content, learning objectives and participants in CMC activities. Conference moderators will be encouraged to circulate roles in WebQuests, perhaps offering a window before each such activity during which learners can volunteer for more or less prominent and time-consuming roles depending on their circumstances. In turn, more experienced students will be encouraged to model appropriate behaviours, and supportive contributions accorded public recognition. In a very real sense student behaviours will be effectively self moderating based on the fact that levels of effort and commitment are very visible in the on-line learning environment:

Conrad, 2002

Tutors

Burge and O’Rourke (1998; p.199) reflect that what tutors can expect to have to change in their approach and working practices will depend on their existing styles and strategies: we simply do not know enough about these areas to predict the levels of support that tutors may require. This is perhaps the area of greatest risk in the LSHTM implementation. When learner attitudes to e:learning were surveyed this revealed strong intrinsic motivations, and a real flexibility of approach. Such a study has not been completed of tutors and administrators of the programme, so it is not possible to say with certainty whether this openness is shared by them or whether they are more attuned and used to a ‘transmission’ model of learning (Rowntree, 2002; p.34).

As Brown identifies, this is culture change as well as curriculum change, and will need to be managed accordingly (1999; p.187). On a pragmatic level, it will be important to manage tutors expectations of the increased workload and their own learning curve in working with CMCs. Tutors will be offered training in e:moderating skills rather than systems (Freeman, 1997; Mason, 1998). The benefits to tutors of developing or updating these transferable e:moderating skills can also be influential. It will be of benefit to identify and enlist a change ‘champion’ of suitable stature to lead the transition to the new ways of working. Finally, if tutor resistance to contributing to formative assessment of conference activity is anticipated, then the development of rubrics will accelerate this process.

From a workload standpoint, tutors’ involvement should phase out over the length of the course as mentor involvement builds and peer groups form:

However it is important to acknowledge that there will be peaks and troughs within the general trend, with tutor involvement rising before and after key assessment stages and in the run up to the larger, more complex WebQuest activities or Plenary conferences:

Assessment

Conference

After the initial implementation, a support pack for tutors will be developed along the lines of the support provided to Associate Lecturers at the OU (UK) described by Sewart (1998). Sewart’s own description of the way this role has evolved is enough to suggest that attempting to document the role and responsibilities earlier than this might be counter-productive.

Conclusion and recommendations

The course design specification for the LSHTM ID distance learning programme responded to learners’ needs for increased contact with tutors, and activities centred on their work contexts in health practice and laboratory science. On one level, the support programme responds to new needs generated by the shift to new learning media. On another, it contributes to the enrichment of the learning experience – and further grounds it flexible cognition learning theory - as it develops the reach of the course into the workplaces by involving mentors in the support and formative assessment processes.

However these proposals come at a price. One administrator currently handles support for all the distance learning programmes which the LSHTM currently runs – three full MSc programmes with associated post graduate diploma options. One of these programmes already uses web conferencing, but the fact remains that the emphasis of the role is shifting towards computer-assisted, ‘distributed’ support in some areas, and requiring more ‘subject-specific’, academic expertise in others. Perhaps a level of autonomy is being removed from the role (Reid, 1995). Certainly, the roles and responsibilities for that individual, and the definition of what makes for a quality service in the role, are changing at least as much as they are for tutors.

Some learners, too, may find the proliferation of contextual inputs oppressive; as Alexander Gibson (June 01, 2003, H804Feedback03) writes:

As I pointed out in my feedback all the activities in Block 1 were about me, me, me and me. This didn't help bring us together as a group and there were just too many contexts to take on board.

However others will see the benefits and a level of realism in the problem:

I agree that the large number of contexts (one for each group member) was potentially difficult but isn't this a problem inherent in examining [the] implementation of ODL? After all implementation is inextricably tangled up with context and the messy business of what is likely to work in each unique situation.

Wendy Tagg, June 22, 2003; H804Feedback03

A final issue is that I have concentrated here on ‘set up’ phases (Freeman, 1997; p.50) rather than management and evaluation stages. It will be important to nurture evaluation loops with tutors, administrators, mentors and students in order to establish that the support mechanisms respond to the demands of learners and the re-engineered course.

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