Facilitator training for distance education contact sessions

Abstract

Distance education (DE), a term applied to study programmes dealing with students who study independently, is characterised by a lecturer/presenter acting as a facilitator to engage students. The facilitator and the students are separated in space and time. The DE factors that contribute to students’ success or failure include the extent to which facilitators have been trained and prepared and have received support before the contact sessions, as well as the facilitators’ ability to interact with the students and to create an opportunity for interaction among the students. This article is based on the training and preparation facilitators at the University of Pretoria receive in order to improve their professional practice in the Advanced Certificate in Education (ACE), for the Education Management programme that teaches students who study on their own. Five facilitators of the ACE programme in the Eastern Cape and Limpopo provinces were purposively sampled and interviewed. The findings revealed that there was no standardised training programme designed for the facilitators, resulting in some facilitators being better prepared than others. These findings will make a contribution towards the design of a proactive DE facilitator support programme for the achievement of excellence in DE.