Face To Face Sessions As Seen A Fruitful Experience

from tutors (Fung & Carr, 2000) as seen when, the format of such sessions deviated from students initial expectations in authors study conducted, students still rated the session highly as it was seen a”fruitful experience”. This is because as stated by Ogina and Mampane (2013) successful distance learning occurs, when there is contact between the tutor and the student, between the student and course material and active learning through interactions with other students.

The importance of face-to-face sessions thus goes beyond bridging the gap between student and intuition, according to Beaudoin ( as cited in Ogina & Mampane ,2013) study material such as study guides, module worksheets are developed in such a way that the content and structure

The system neglected to provide the basic requirements to its learners, such as on time delivery of module material. According to Thorpe (as cited in Olivier, 2016) advances in technology in open distance learning institutions have resulted in move from traditional paper based correspondence, to correspondence in an online environment. Despites such advances students still face problems such a venue changes at last minute, tutorials sessions occurring after assignments were due, the cancellation contact session and lack of response from the universities’ administrative department regarding poor service delivery (Ogina & Mampane, 2013). Students who attended contact sessions also felt that the tutors did not adequately prepare for the session, and as a result repeated what was in the module material. Furthermore students felt that tutorials held were boring, did not help students to understand the module, and were considered to be of poor quality. Student felt that most contact sessions were set up at inconvenient times as most of them were employed full time (Ushadevi, 1994).

As stated by Fung and Carr, (2000) excellent tutorials help students to understand the course content; they help students to do assignments; they are interesting; it requires the students to discuss the topic; and provides students with many opportunities to participate. Thus through meeting such a criteria open distance learning institution would be able to provide quality lectures, that open distance learning student will be motivated to