Central Institute for Distance Education Research - FernUniversität in Hagen
Dec. 1999
reprinted from: (paper 48 , p.140f) of : Learning at a Distance - a world perspective, ed. by John S. Daniel, Martha.A.Stroud and John R. Thompson, Athabasca University / International Council for Correspondence Education, Edmonton, 1982)
Industrialized Counselling
Developing a system that takes care of all pre-known information gives more time for person-to person contacts.Counselling may be defined as a form of processing information in order to induce personal change. Processing of information also means matching appropriate information to a specific client-situation. Counsellors take responsibility only for the objective information, leaving the client responsible for any decision that may lead to personal change. The project described below is a form of counselling because objective information is matched to the clients specific situation - the subjective part of the information processing is induced by making the client reflect on his own statements. Our goal was to develop a system of counselling that takes care of all pre-known information needs in order to have more time for person-to-person contacts.
"Industrialized" counselling
A counselling system for mass counselling developed by a small team of counsellors and run with the aid of computer technology can be called "industrialized counselling" , not only because of the mass effect (which exists in all forms of advice and counselling given in the mass media) but also because of the aspect of product variety and division of labour during the process of production of the means of counselling. Yet it is still counselling because of the aspect of individualization and two-way communication. Its major deficit - for any therapeutic goal - is the lack of an authentic person-to-person relationshipThe aim of the activities of this helping agency is not so much to adapt people interested in learning at a distance to the system offered but to leave the responsibility for the encounter with this institution with the client. In order to prevent drop-out it seems to be necessary that people interested in distant study know exactly how the system works. Moreover they should examine their own situation in terms of working habits, time available, style of learning, behaviour towards workloads, motivation, etc.
The following project was developed with two central themes:
- How does the system work?
- What is the client`s own learning situation?
STEB (STudienEingangsBeratung)
counselling at the Beginning of Learning at a DistanceBefore enrolling with the FernUniversität every student-to-be has the chance to order a preliminary course entitled "How to Study" that was developed five years ago and has been revised several times. The assignments are somewhat different from the usual course. We ask the client to answer a set of questions about his life situation, his study motives, learning habits, etc. These questions are a vital step towards our goal of having the client initiate a kind of self-examination with respect to studying. We do not want to judge the client´s motives, we want them to understand their own motives.
We offer a counselling service by mail if the client has answered social, motivational, situational and even practical questions such as "Do you have a cassette tape recorder?"
Together with the social data, therefore, we have information in crucial fields of interest for motivation counselling and the prevention of early drop-out. The answers are put into our computer and combined with a data bank of counselling texts that are written for each problem area.
By matching the information stored in our data bank with the individual situation we generate:
- 1. a personal computer-letter
- 2. a data file of the answer-structures for research purposes.
The computer-letter is a very simple but effective procedure to select and to stream information according to a client situation. Within one week the client receives a letter that might consist of 5 to 20 text modules commenting on the answers given in the answer sheet. 96% of the letters are truly individual. Each season we produce some 4000 letters and there are no two letters alike.
The use of such a system only makes sense when there is much information on the university´s side - e.g. feedback about a personal situation like fear of dropping-out because of overload - that is difficult to find or easy to forget or not even conscious on the part of the client. The information given in the computer-letter is meant to correct the "map" the client has of his future endeavour, or to respond in a positive reinforcing way.
Up to 89% of our clients have found such a letter helpful and would like to see this instrument of counselling continued.
The second effect of the project is twofold: each year at an early stage we get information about the structure of our new cleintele and secondly, it can be helpful for system evaluation with longitudinal studies of motivation etc. Currently, we are working on a sub-project to determine differences in personality traits among our students and between our distant-study students and other relevant groups.
The impact of this form of industrialized counselling
There is not much that is totally new about this project - computer technology has had several generations in the field of guidance (Rayman et al,1978:349). Systems for interactive communication do exist and have already been evaluated with positive results. Two aspects, however, are worth noting:- 1. The institution itself operates this counselling system with the aim of ensuring that clients do not enrol unless they really are sure that they want to risk distant study
- 2. The text modules are developed not with the intention of mere infromation processing but rather in an attempt to create an understanding climate in order to induce self-examination.
- 1st generation - batch information storage and retrieval systems
- 2nd generation - on-line information storage and retrieval systems
- 3rd generation - on-line information systems that deliver significant guidance content beyond career information
- 4th generation - information retrieval system with guidance and counselling
By 1982 we want to rely in our text modules not only upon information given by the clients but also, in a research part of the project, upon diagnostic information using a learning style inventory (see Kolb, 1976)
Helmut Fritsch
Fernuniversität
West GermanyReferences
Kolb, D.A. (1976) Learning style Inventory. Self Scoring Test and Interpretation Booklet, Boston: McBer.
Rayman, J.R. Bryson,D.L.and Bowlsbay,J.H. (1978) The field trial of discover: a new computerized interactive guidance system. The Vocational Guidance Quarterly June 1978, 349-360