Structure and Process in Dual-Model Institutions: Implications for Development

Structure and Process in Dual-Model Institutions: Implications for Development

Abstract
Without a systems approach, the introduction of distance education in a conventional university comes with structural flaws that militate against the realization of its potential and often leads to the distance education unit being marginalised. This is because the organizational structure of a distance education unit in a conventional university not only provide the framework within which people work but it also shapes the attitudes of organizational members through a process of organizational socialization. Nnazor’s (1994) assertion provides an understanding of the dynamics of a distance education system in dual-mode institutions.

The paper explores the manner in which distance education was introduced into existing conventional institutions, the organizational structures that were created to manage ODL, the challenges that the institutions experienced, their responses to those challenges and the implications for development. The University of Botswana is used to illustrate the challenges as they were experienced by this institution and how it responded to those challenges which included either restructuring or formulating ODL policies. The paper concludes that a systems approach would have provided a smother take-off for the Distance Education Unit at the University of Botswana and that would have optimised the use of distance education in moving forward the national development agenda and strategies.

Organizational models for distance education institutions in higher education have been categorised variously by different authors. Overall, three broad categories of distance education institutions seem to emerge from the literature. These three are single- and dual-mode institutions and consortia (Rumble & Latchem, 2004; Hanna, 2003; Moore & Kearsley, 1996). Within these three broad categories a variety of combinations exists distinguishable by level, application of technology, orientation—private or public, etc.

The focus of this paper is on dual-mode universities. A dual-mode institution offers programs by both conventional and distance education modes. Historically there were two main variants of dual-mode universities including arrangements which have fully integrated teaching staff where the teachers are expected to teach in both the external and internal programs and those that have some degree of specialization among staff to teach in either mode (Chick, 1992). For many dual-mode universities, distance education programmes are administered through a specialized unit or department. These models have changed and slowly given way to other structures as Rumble and Latchem (2004) rightly point out that the models are “fluid, transmuting and converging.” (p. 134).

To understand the governance of a distance education institution one has to understand two of its important features; the clientele—distance education is designed to serve the needs of adults who are unable or choose not to attend a campus-based university, and whose personal circumstances, such as full-time employment, are such that they can only study on a part-time basis. The second feature is a consequence of the first in that, since the students do not come to a campus for instruction, the instructional materials must be made available to them where they are, at or near their homes (Rumble, 1981). For that reason, distance-teaching institutions have to design, develop, produce, and distribute instructional materials to the students.

The basic structure of a dual-mode university entails the existence of a unit or department that has the responsibility of coordinating the provision of distance education programmes. The functions that facilitate the process of distance education include materials development; materials distribution; tutoring and counselling; student records; and assessment or accreditation (categorization by Perraton, 2004). The processes involved in the development of instructional materials are quasi-industrial. These quasi-industrial processes bring to the distance teaching university a dimension that is almost foreign to the governance and management of a conventional university. A conflict situation thus arises between academic freedom and the necessity for maintaining effective production mechanisms. These seemingly irreconcilable elements need to be reconciled in a distance teaching university to ensure quality of provision. Because of the complex interdependence of the functions of the system that is set up to facilitate learning at a distance, there is need for constant administrative attention to achieve predictability and control in order to realize the goal.

Powar (2003), states that “the successful governance of an academic institution is dependent, to a considerable extent, on its organizational structure” 9p. 66). Writing on the experience of the University of Zambia a dual-mode institution, Siaciwena indicates that the distance education unit experienced problems arising from the integrated structure of distance education at that University. Nnazor (1994) identified structural factors of the Correspondence and Open Studies Institute of the University of Lagos, another dual-mode university, as adversely affecting the provision of distance education in the institution. In both cases the organizational structure of the dual mode university impacted their potential.

Many conventional universities around the world have introduced distance education to run parallel with the conventional offering in the same institution giving rise to dual-mode universities. Mugridge and Maraj projected in 1992 that “there may soon come a point at which there is no longer any significant division between distance and conventional education, when university education…will be conducted by different means at different times and places according to the requirements of different groups of students and resources available to different institutions” (p. 154). They saw dual-mode universities as the way to go in the future. The University of Botswana saw dual-mode as the way to go to increase access to university education for the nation.

The need to increase the number of university programs offered through distance education is critical to Botswana because the country has only one university. The University came to the realization that it was not meeting all the needs for university-level education and that it could not do so adequately as long as it used the conventional, face-to-face mode of education alone. In 1991 the Centre for Continuing Education was created with a specialized unit, the Distance Education Unit (DEU), responsible for distance education programmes to be offered by the University. The goal was to take existing university programs to “as wide a community as possible.”

The approaches used by different institutions to introduce the distance education are probably as varied as the institutions themselves. However, many of them have followed a piece-meal approach where the introduction of distance education is not sufficiently planed. And as such this innovation is introduced into a context that is not ready for it both structurally and operationally. It has been pointed out that the piecemeal incremental approach to the reform of educational systems has not worked (Banathy, 1992, Robinson, 2004). In many ways this is what happened when distance education was introduced at the University of Botswana in 1991. The approach failed to appreciate the fact that the Distance Education Unit would have to function together with the other subsystems and be integrated into the system in order to realise its purpose and to achieve the goal of the University.

The nature of the mandate was that the Unit was to work collaboratively with the teaching departments to convert existing University programmes into the distance mode. The Unit would provide expertise in distance education as well as the day-to-day administration of the programme. The teaching department on the other hand would be responsible for content and quality assurance, and it will provide the academic home for the programmes. To get faculties and teaching departments to convert their programmes into distance education became a tall order for the Unit. There was no framework to guide and facilitate the process. This was one major limitation of the process of introducing distance education at the University of Botswana.

A distance education programme at UB can be initiated by a teaching department that might want to convert one of its existing programmes into the mode. It could also come as a request from one of the stakeholders such as a Government ministry as was the case with the first two distance education programmes to be offered by the Centre for Continuing Education. One was inherited from the predecessor of the Centre, the Certificate in Adult Education. The programme had been developed in response to a request by the Ministry of Education, Department of Adult Education which wanted professional development of extension educators involved in the National Literacy Programme. The other programme, the Diploma in Primary Education, came as a request of the same Ministry's Department of Teacher Training and Development to develop an upgrading programme for serving primary school teachers from the Certificate, to the Diploma in Primary Education.

The need to upgrade primary school teachers was actually part of the implementation of the national development strategy for improving the quality of education as recommended in the Revised National Policy on Education. The policy sought to improve the quality of primary education, which the country regards as foundational to the education of its citizens. An improved basic education lays a good foundation upon which to build successive levels of education. The basic requirement for one to teach at the primary school level would be a minimum of a Diploma in Primary Education not the Certificate as before (Republic of Botswana, 1994). Ten thousand teachers needed to be upgraded. Actually, other than through distance education, there was no way in which this number of teachers could be upgraded within a reasonable timeframe.

The Distance Education Unit regarded the request as perfectly in line with the Unit's mandate to increase access to university/tertiary education through the provision of distance education programmes. However, the enthusiasm of the Unit was not shared by the Department of Primary Education which could provide an academic home for the programme. The Department had its own priorities and distance education at the time was not one of them. The Unit was unable to persuade the Department to provide the academic home for the programme. There was nothing binding the Department of Primary Education to agree to the request. The CCE together with the Ministry of Education had to come up with alternative structures to offer the DPE by distance mode.

The manner in which distance education was introduced into UB militated against the realization of the objectives for which the Unit was set up. In addition, the structure of the Distance Education Unit was such that it could be easily isolated even as Nnazor (1994) asserted that the organizational structure of a distance education unit provides the framework within which people work and that it also shapes the attitude of organizational members through a process of organizational socialization. In response to a seemingly ineffective Unit the University in October 2000 commissioned a consultancy to undertake a comprehensive review of CCE in order “redefine its vision, operations, priorities, and to develop a modus operandi that is fully compatible with both national and university planning developments.” (Nhundu, 2005, p. 1) The main findings of the consultancy were that the main barrier to increasing access to University education through CCE included a policy vacuum and marginalization of CCE within the University. A corollary problem being that CCE's relationship with the Faculties was under-developed (Yerbury, et el., 2001). The Tau's (2002) study conducted in late 1999 came to a similar conclusion in that it identified the lack of an implementation strategy to guide the work of DEU as one of the major flaws that negatively affected the quality of its work.

As a way of implementing the recommendation of the External Review of CCE, the process of restructuring the Centre was initiated and this exercise is yet to be completed. Along with the restructuring exercise the UB Distance Education Mainstreaming Policy was enacted in 2005. The Mainstreaming Policy attempts to fill the policy gap that has dogged the provision of distance education since the creation of the Centre with “specialised Distance Education Unit” in 1991. However, based on the restructuring draft, the proposed structure does not seem to suggest a radical move from the status quo.

Experience has shown that traditional methods of education and training cannot adequately address the scope and scale of massive expansion of learning needed to achieve national, regional including the Millennium Development Goals (COL, 2006, Foley, 2003). These goals would need open and distance learning which can meet such expanded needs. The development agenda for Botswana such as for instance, access to primary, secondary and tertiary education; quality basic education; gender equality; poverty reduction through the education of women, are candidates for the use of open and distance learning.

The manner in which distance education was introduced into a conventional university and the organizational structure that was set up to facilitate its provision affected its potential. This impact must be viewed in the context of the bigger picture that goes beyond the institution to include the development strategies for the nation; in particular, the development strategies that are better served and brought forward by distance education. The goal of promoting gender equality and empowering women, for instance, can be well served by distance education at the University of Botswana. The Diploma in Primary Education by distance mode puts UB in a critical position of forwarding this development strategy. The programme serves thousands of teachers most of whom are based in rural areas and are women. The first cohort of 1999/2000 had 600 students 79.3% of whom were female from a population that boasted of 77.4% female teachers at this level, at the time. Further more, about 70.0% of them were based in rural areas, compared to about 30.0% who were based in urban centres (Tau 2002; Republic of Botswana 1999, 35). The statistics for a period of nine years shows a consistently high percentage of female students to male enrolled in the Centre for Continuing Education programmes, University of Botswana (Table 1)

Overall enrolment of female to male for all UB programmes for 2004/05, was 52% female to 48 male and for 2005/06 the trend has continued with 53% female to 47 male. Five of the seven faculties account for the ratio include Business, Education, Humanities, Social Sciences and the Centre for Continuing Education (UB, 2006).

Tau (2002) concluded that failure to use systems approach delayed the Unit from realizing its potential. It thus affected UB's contribution to the realization of national development strategies such as improving quality of education, addressing poverty alleviation by providing women opportunities to access quality higher education and equity. However, other factors have been identified as affecting the success of distance education in a dual-mode university. Ntloedibe-Kuswani and Tau (2006) argue that it is important for institutions that are thinking of introducing distance education mid-stream to conduct front-end analysis before any distance education program can be designed, developed and implemented. They go on to assert that front-end analysis prepares an institution to address potential challenges that might negatively impact the quality of distance education.

Croft (1992), for her part identified four conditions that would ensure successful implementation of distance education in a dual-mode institution including., that it should be an administrative unit with some level of authority, have cooperation from other units, have a well-trained staff and sound funding. These notwithstanding, a systems view and approach will encompass them because it begs the understanding of the system (the university system) and the relational arrangements its subsystems including their roles; that will inform the design of a distance education system that will be appropriate for the context.

With the development of the UB Distance Education Mainstreaming Policy, together with the Unit's efforts that have resulted in the development of a number of programmes so far, the Unit, and indeed the University is posed to move a number of national development agendas forward through distance education. The first batch of the Diploma in Primary Education by distance education mode will graduate this year, 2006. Nevertheless, the long meandering route that the dual-mode University of Botswana took to arrive at the point of relative success was not necessary and would have been avoided if a systems view and approach were used to introduce distance education into the University system. To a large extent this would have optimised the use of distance education in moving forward the national development agenda and strategies.

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