Academic support for online students in the English-speaking Caribbean at the University of the West Indies Open Campus

Abstract

The academic support system that is available online for distance students can prove quite beneficial to them before and especially during their course/programme of study. Potter posited that the goal of a programme’s academic learner support services for distance learners must be to meet their needs by linking them with fellow students, faculty and administrative personnel. The University of the West Indies Open Campus (UWIOC) aims to do just that by providing its online students with a variety of academic support services and resources to assist them to: successfully navigate the online environment; engage with and participate in all required activities; motivate and encourage any possible non-participating students; and create a community of learners. Ultimately, all these support services are offeredc in an effort to foster a positive and meaningful online learning experience that should guarantee students’ successful completion of their course/programme of study. During 2015, a survey was carried out to ascertain how students felt about the UWIOC’s academic support system. The perceptions of the respondents will be presented as vignettes as well as descriptive statistics based on the results obtained from this survey. The goal of this article is, therefore, to share the intervening conditions influencing academic support strategies that are utilised by the team in the UWIOC’s Programme Delivery Department as well as the results of the survey which is expected to indicate if the students are finding these academic support services useful and beneficial.