UNMASKING THE EARLY DEPARTURE PUZZLE IN AN EDUCATION PROGRAMME OF THE ZIMBABWE OPEN UNIVERSITY THROUGH SHORT MESSAGE SERVICES (SMS).

Abstract

Education is seen as a learning process and as a service to students. Thus, in a developing country, distance education offers a means of increasing access to this. It is therefore critical that students sail through the system and benefit from distance education programmes. It becomes startling and disturbing if the students depart early from the distance education programmes. This study sought to determine factors contributing to early departure in an education programme of the Zimbabwe Open University. A snapshot (Flick 2004) study of a convenient sample of 61 students was made through Short Message Services (SMS). Findings revealed that financial constraints, failure to respect students' social capital, inadequate course materials, longer student lifecycle, irrelevant curricula, plummeting interest in distance education programmes caused by the marginalisation of distance education programmes, economic hardships brought about by record hyperinflation and social restrictions such as stress, ill health, family deaths, individually or in combination, team up to scare away students from the programmes understudy. The study recommended the need to fawn on the students by employing best practices that meet students' needs of acquiring knowledge, skills and attitudes for professional and personal development so that distance education teacher graduates are skilled enough to live and work in the technologically changing global society as knowledge retrievers and knowledge creators. There is also need to set a vibrant student service and support centre that is closer to student reality and with capacity to detect changing student needs so that these could be addressed promptly. Further studies need to be done on support processes like computers and other technologies that are interlinked with tele learning.