Student Perceptions on Support Services in Sri Lanka
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Abstract
There are a number of components in distance education which broadly include student support services, management of the institution, financial services and examination etc. Student Support Services is one of the major components of a distance education institution The OUSL provides many support services to the students which includes Counseling at student enrollment, tutor counseling, print material, Face to Face contact sessions, Tutor clinics, Practical sessions, Audio/video facilities, Library Facilities, Financial assistance, Evaluation of student Performances, Field visits and training programmers. The main objective of the study is to examine students’ perception on student support provided by the Open University. A structured questionnaire was used in gathering information. The sample included 500 undergraduate students selected at random belongs to the four faculties of Natural Science, Engineering Technology, Humanities and Social science and Education of the Open University of Sri Lanka. On the CART analysis, four faculties were split into two parent nodes (Node 1 and the node 1 included 48.4% of student responses from the Faculty Engineering Technology, 37.7% from Faculty of Natural Sciences, 12.0% from Faculty of Education and no students’ responses from Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. Similarly, Node 2 consists of 47.3% student responses from the Faculty of Engineering Technology, 30.4% from the Faculty of Natural Sciences, 11.6% from the Faculty of HSS and 10.7 from the Faculty of Education. The students perception on student support services offered by Open University is vary across the faculties. In summary, there is a need in improving the available student support services such a prospectus, evaluation methods and supplementary audio cassettes produced by the Open University of Sari Lanka.
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References
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