Page 245 - Universitas Terbuka Center of Excellence In Asia 2010 and The World 2020 (A Journey Towards a Leading Open and Distance Education Institution 1984-2008)
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graphics easily if necessary in order to complete the explanation of particular
courses. The students' expense to communicate is quite cheap compared to
the benefit they can get.
The other strength for counseling through electronic mail is that the
students' questions and tutors' responses can be put in a discussion forum
through the internet so that they can be read by the students who subscribe
to the discussion forum facilities and they can create good atmosphere for
discussion because other students can join the question sessions. Counseling
through facsimile can be an alternative for the students because it reaches
the destination faster than the postal letter although it is slower than the
internet. The other weakness is that the writing are often unreadable when it
reaches the receiving facsimile machine. Unfortunately, until now there has
not been any tutor appointed as the students' advisor during their studies at
UT and they have got no access to the tutors' names for each course to be
contacted if they have difficulty in learning. Nevertheless, counseling can be
done through electronic mail on info@mail.ut.ac.id , and the manager will
transfer this to the relevant Faculty or the Post Graduate Program .
Academic counseling service through telephone is not recommended for
discussion or explanation of the content of the courses because the airtime is
expensive. Beside that, there has not been appointment of academic staff on
schedule to be the students' advisor who can be contacted at anytime to
provide academic counseling .
• Library service
Beside tutorials and academic counseling services , UT also provides
learning sources such as the library. UT is today developing an e-library
system that enables students to access knowledge through the internet.
Nevertheless, UT still needs to expand its e-library capacity especially in
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