Appendix A 

Resource-based Learning

 Introduction 

It is an often-stated reality that the South African education and training system must foster innovative, cost-effective methods of educational provision to take account of the reality that, in real terms, funding will either be capped at present levels or, more likely, dwindle. This becomes particularly important because that system needs to broaden access to, and make great improvements in the quality of, education and training opportunities available to the vast majority of South Africans. 

Furthermore, a diversity of approaches to improving education and learning should be supported. This appears to be contradictory to the concept of cost-effectiveness, but, if diversity is planned in an integrated and coherent way, there is no reason why it should not contribute to the cost-effectiveness of education and training. The aim of this appendix is to outline briefly how, by moving to ‘resource-based learning’, it can become possible to foster both cost-effectiveness and a diversity of approaches all sectors of education and training. 

Before considering the concept of ‘resource-based learning’ in more detail, however, it is useful to provide some guidelines for well-functioning distance education. Although, they are focused on distance education, several of them will also be more broadly applicable to educational provision using resource-based learning.   

 The components of a well-functioning distance education system 

1.    Course Design and Development

1.1  Well designed courses:  In good distance education, the course, rather than     the educator, provides an appropriate learning environment for students. Rather than simply referring to a set of materials, however, the course is the structure of learning that is designed into the materials. It has four basic elements:  

•       Conceptual pathways to command of its knowledge, conceptualizing skills, and practical abilities.

•       Educational strategies for helping the learner find his or her way through these pathways.

•       Summative and formative assessment should be integral to the learning process.

An essential component in the successful design of courses is collaboration. This can be achieved by using an approach where a group of people, each with particular skills and competencies, develop a course as a team. Although there is no golden mean, nor indeed an absolute minimum, a substantial ratio of staff course design time to learner study time will be inevitable in developing courses. Some of the better courses in more challenging subjects, however, might have ratios of fifty to one hundred hours of design time to one hour of learner study time. This has clear implications for courses designed for small numbers of students: they are simply not financially viable if collaborative design processes are to be used. The materials and presentation of the course as a whole must excite, engage, and reward the learner. Courses should be designed so as to involve learners actively in their own learning and should allow learners quick access and clear movement through them. Although there is no need for courses to use advanced technol­ogies, most, but not necessarily all, will make use of a variety of media. Provision should

•       also be made, in the design of courses, for the necessary practical work. In order to be as flexible and open as possible, courses should be organized in modules.

2. Counselling and Support

2.1 Counselling

Provision should be made by distance education providers to advise and help individuals

who would otherwise be isolated throughout the learning process, and, in particular, to

help them to make choices before enrolling for educational programmes. It should b

made easily available through a variety of devices including, most important­ly, human

intervention. 

 

2.2.1  Learner support

 

If learners are to adapt to the special require­ments of guided self-study, they require

various forms of support, for example satisfactory access to tutors and facilitators,

opportunity to interact with other learners, and access to the necessary facilities.  

 

2.2.2  Provision of administrative support to learners

 

This would involve administrative support on a number of levels, including enrolment

procedures, payment of fees, delivery of materials, and in keeping channels of

communica­tion open. The aim, throughout, should be to keep administrative procedures

few and simple. 

3. Quality Assurance

3.1 Quality assurance in all learning programmes

Several mechanisms need to be established to ensure the quality of learning

pro­grammes and their capacity for self-improvement. One of the most critical of these is

a mechanism which enables meaningful and reliable feedback from learners and tutors

into the ongoing performance of the institution. 

 

3.2 Research, evaluation and support

 

As with all aspects of education, continuing research, evaluation, and development is

necessary for the improvement of distance education provision. Distance education

providers also need to have effective research as the basis for improving the quality of their

performance. 

4. Effectively Managed Distance Learning

Effectively managing distance education involves establishing perform­ance criteria and 

targets for the institution, together with mechanisms for publicly and regularly evaluating

performance and incorporating lessons learned into improved practices. It also includes

ensuring that governance structures are representative of South African society and that

the learner body is adequately represented in such structures.  

The collpase of distinctions between distance and face-to-face education 

The growth of ‘distance education’ methods of delivery has been a key feature of education in the twentieth century. Initially, these methods were developed as distinctly different from face-to-face education, with the unfortunate consequence that they were regarded as inferior to face-to-face education methods. Distance education has come to be seen as provision for those people denied access to face-to-face education (either because they cannot afford the latter or because circumstances demand that they study on a part-time basis). The growth of new communications technologies, however, has begun to make the notion of ‘distance’ difficult to interpret, while opening a great number of educationally and financially viable means of providing education. Simultaneously, awareness is growing that elements of distance education have almost always existed in ‘face-to-face’ programmes, while educators involved in distance education are increasingly recognizing the importance of different types of face-to-face education as structured elements of their programmes. This renders rigid distinctions between the two forms of delivery meaningless. 

This leads to an important conceptual shift. In many circles, the notion of a continuum of educational provision has been developed. This continuum has, as two imaginary poles provision only at a distance and provision which is solely face-to-face. The reality is that all educational provision exists somewhere on this continuum but cannot be placed strictly at either pole. Re-conceptualizing methods of educational provision as existing somewhere on this imaginary continuum will have the result that certain methods of provision are no longer chosen to the exclusion of others, depending on whether they are ‘distance’ or ‘face-to-face’ education opportunities (as currently happens in South African education). Rather, educational providers, when constructing educational courses, will be able to choose, from a wide variety, those methods which are most appropriate for the context in which they will be providing learning opportunities.  

Another major advantage of this ‘blurring’ is that ‘distance educators’ and ‘face-to-face educators’ will turn from meaningless debates about the relative virtues of particular methods of educational provision, to consideration of the nature of learning and the educational value of a course’s structure and content. Educators often find it necessary to equate particular methods of education with good quality education, in an effort to market the programmes they are offering and give them added status over programmes using different methods of provision. The notion of this continuum is free of such premature and unnecessary judgements about quality.  

It needs to be made clear that no method of educational provision is intrinsically better than another; rather, the appropriateness of selecting a particular method or combination of methods is determined entirely by the context in which they are to be used and the educational needs they are intended to fulfil. This conceptual shift is vital in changing the structure of the teacher education system. In particular, it will allow for greater flexibility and open up possibilities of collaboration which are vital to an improvement in educational quality and in the cost-effectiveness of educational provision.    

 A shift to resource-based learning 

A logical consequence of the collapse of distinctions between contact and distance education, together with the increasingly exciting variety of media available and decline in production and reception costs of these media, is the emergence of resource-based learning. The concept is not new; it is based on the principle that educators should select, from the full range of educational provision, those methods of educational provision most appropriate to the context in which they are providing education. This principle is, however, augmented by the understanding that managing the process of learning by using a talking lecturer is neither educationally nor financially effective. This is especially important in a context in which quality solutions to teacher education problems (including the need to develop critical thinking skills and independence of mind among teachers) are required on a massive scale, particularly to supplement the education of many teachers who have received poor quality education. Simultaneously, though, there is a critical shortage of teacher educators, particularly in areas of national need. 

In essence, the notion of resource-based learning means that a significant but varying proportion of communica­tion between learners and educators is not face-to-face, but takes place through the use of different media as necessary. Importantly, the face-to-face contact which does take place does not involve simple transmission of knowledge from educator to learner; instead it involves various forms of learner support, for example tutorials, mentor support, peer group discussion, or practical work.  

The introduction of resource-based learning is already emerging strongly in the 1990s as more ‘contact’ institutions (including universities and colleges of education) are becoming ‘dual-mode’ institutions, offering both distance and face-to-face education programmes. Contact institutions are making this move both to cope with increasing pressure on places at contact institutions and to find more cost-effective ways of providing education in a context of dwindling funds. As the distinctions between the two ‘modes’ of education continue to collapse, however, it is becoming increasingly difficult to identify which programmes are being offered in which mode (particularly as resources developed for ‘distance education’ programmes are now being used in many ‘contact’ programmes). The emergence of new communications technologies, which allow for much easier and cheaper production and dissemination of knowledge, through various media, will speed up these trends. 

If resource-based learning is to be implemented successfully in South African teacher education, it will need to be based on open approaches to education and be informed by many of the guidelines for well-functioning distance education programmes. By making this shift, however, it will be possible to develop a new education and training system for which can begin to tackle the many problems identified in recent policy research processes by finding cost-effective, sustainable solutions.