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support given through various media such as radio, television, telephone,
internet or correspondence . Face-to-face tutorials in distance education system
are different from face-to-face lecturing. The aim of tutorials is to assist
students and to give feedback in their process of mastering important concepts
of a particular learning material , not as a main source of learning such as in
lecture.
The Development of Face-to-face Tutorials
At the beginning of the UT establishment is 1984, face-to-face tutorial mode
had been offered to the students. At that time , tutorials were attended by about
80% of the students, but at the end of second year, it appeared that the
attendance was diminished to 25% on average (Setijadi, 1982). This information
was based on some reports on tutorial activities at the Regional Offices which
concluded that students were lacking motivation to attend the tutorials . in the
beginning , there were quite a number of students who attended tutorials.
However, in the following tutorial sessions, their attendance rates decreased.
This continually happened until 1998, so that some Regional Offices actually
stopped performed face-to-face tutorials since 1993.
Realizing the importance of tutorial in supporting students learning, UT
tried to reorganize its tutorials. The policy of rerunning tutorials in all Regional
Offices was applied in 1999 by giving incentive as much as 2 million rupiah per
tutorial package to the Regional Offices conducting tutorials. The Regional
Offices were liberated to determine the tutorial mode . In order to receive the
incentives, a proposal had to be submitted to the Vice Rector for Academic
Affairs , and then it was reviewed by Vice Rector for the Student Affairs. The
review was considered in the decision of eligible Regional Offices that were
received tutorial incentives (Wardani, 2003).
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