Page 173 - Open and Distance Education In Asia : Good Practice From AAOU Members

Asian Association of Open Universities (AAOU) 153

official documents. The F2F sessions and the The teletutorial system can probably be
Learning Centers also became the venue for considered as the early generation of
students to meet and socialize with their technology-mediated synchronous sessions
fellow learners which somehow provided in the hybrid format where some students are
that sense of belongingness, which is usually F2F with the tutor and others are connected
missing among DE students, via the telephone line.

Specific for UPOU also, there came a point Disrupting the Disruption: DE in the Era
when the number of students enrolled in a of the Internet
course in a Learning Center could no longer DE has been considered as a disruption in
merit a cost-effective way of holding F2F the traditional educational system which
sessions, hence teletutorials were held was exclusive and very much anchored
instead (Bandalaria, 2007). In this period of on the students’ physical presence in the
DE development in the Philippines, telephone campus and perceived to be the indicator
played a major role to provide tutorial of quality education. This was articulated by
support to the students. In this teletutorial Tait (2008 citing de Salvo, 2002) as follows
system, a speaker phone (Polycom, Figure with reference to the University of London
2) was used. The tutor was in the university External Study System:
Headquarter meeting a group of students F2F
and connected through the telephone line to The great advantage an Oxford or
other small groups of students also gathered Cambridge man (sic but actually
F2F in University Learning Centers. accurate) claims over his London rival
is his social education. It is he says a
Figure 2 moral training. His university career
The speakerphone Used in iTeletutorials is far more than the acquisition of
During the Late 90s to 2000 knowledge. He is no lowly student,
working narrowly for his own hand,
but a man among men, and he points
to the union debating society, to the
collegiate and university football,
cricket and boating, as influence to this
end. (de Salvo, 2002, p. 38).

Probably, this challenge of proving that
DE is at par with the conventional mode
of instruction drove DE practitioners and
scholars to maximize the potential of modern
ICTs, like the Internet, to further bridge the
physical (and hopefully, transactional or
pedagogic distance as proposed by Moore,
2018) distance that separates the teacher

University of the Philippines Open University (UPOU)