Abstract
This paper describes the Self Access Centre (SAC) at the Universidad de Quintana Roo and presents the research support for the model in terms of mass-customization. The SAC with its systems, materials, activities and tutor support may be described as offering mass-customized language education. Tutor support is conceived in systemic terms as mass-customization, but as provider of professional advice in support of students' own learning projects and facilitator of feedback in productive skills, tutor support is highly individualized. However, the mass-customization element makes individualization efficient and achievable.
Highlights
Mass customization is a term taken from the management of processes for industrialized production (Davis 1987)
Descriptors of the service such as the 'supermarket' typification provided by David Gardner and Lindsay Miller (1999) or as resource based autonomy (Benson 2001) are somewhat inadequate to describe the model of self access offered in Universidad de Quintana Roo (UQRoo), and the module type/ customer intervention matrix may be a useful tool for describing learning support services more precisely
Schools adhere to fixed curricula but individual teachers make learning a personal experience for each student
Summary
Mass customization is a term taken from the management of processes for industrialized production (Davis 1987). Learner centred approaches (Nunan and Lamb 1996, Tudor 1996) propose roles for teachers compatible with the professional management of learning. In these approaches, expert teachers are required to apply and interpret instruments designed to discover significant information about learners in order to manage their learning processes. Learner control over learning objectives and/or materials remain central to autonomous learning, but teaching support for learning is becoming a prominent issue All of these approaches have influenced the design of the Self Access Centre (SAC) at the Universidad de Quintana Roo (UQRoo), campus Cozumel. I will show how tutor services may be described in terms of mass customization
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
