About

The Student Advisory Project was an experimental system aimed at helping us think about what online multimedia support could be offered for Open Learning.


The project developed a trial website for an interactive multimedia program which explored ways of offering advice and guidance that could help students and enquirers select appropriate Open University courses and qualifications. The program was designed to provide pathways that could enable users to ask and answer important questions about themselves. These questions related to such issues and areas as personal requirements, type of study, career plans, professional recognition, qualification routes, credit accumulation, and transfer.

The development of interactive student guidance and learning skills development through multimedia programs was a natural extension in the increasingly popular environment of the WorldWideWeb to the provision the OU already offered through the telephone, written materials, workshops, and individual face-to-face guidance. Multimedia had the potential to enhance the capacity of individual students and enquirers to develop their own thinking and learning readiness, and enabled them to make more focused use of advisers, as well as to provide guided access to OU information databases and other programs. The emphasis of the program was to design a system through which learners could be:

  • guided in their course and qualification choices,
  • enabled to improve their understanding of the decision-making process itself and thus increased their ability to become more independent learners in terms of their own educational choices.

The process began by helping to focus on the questions that students might have brought to the Course Choice Advisor. Learners could proceed to animated discussions with advisers and a variety of students who might have helped them think about the issues. The central feature of the system design was around the student making notes as they proceeded, which they would have been able to print out as part of an ongoing personal and learning development portfolio.

Objectives and Scope

The principal features of the guidance program were as follows:

It provided pathways that enabled learners to ask and answer questions of themselves, relating to issues such as qualification routes, professional recognition, career plans, type of study (e.g. time, place, and workload), disability and its effect on study and type of assessment, Credit Accumulation and Transfer; it thus provided the base for informed decision-making and further discussions with the advisory and guidance staff who were ‘signposted’ at appropriate points in the program.
It linked into a range of Student Services public Email addresses.


The Project Board envisaged that it would feed into and draw on the Course Information “Sibyl” database (P2), which provided core up-to-date information about courses and qualifications (close contact was maintained with the P2 project).


Learners should have been able to move to course reservation on the Web once a choice had been made (again, this project worked in consultation with P1, the online enrolment project).
It was possible to join the program at different entry points, depending on the user’s background, situation, and previous use of the program.
The guidance program was underpinned by:

  • Modern approaches to guidance, which were student-focused, worked with students as equal partners, non-directive in tone and content, and consistent with HEQC guidelines on student support and guidance in Higher Education.
  • It aimed to be attractive and user-friendly, holding the user’s attention and encouraging exploration through good use of color and design, as well as interesting content, including the use of case studies and illustrative examples of student experience to help users gain an appreciation of their task.
    The project team also investigated the possibility for the guidance program to feed into and draw on existing related areas and programs, for example, the FirstClass course choice conference (which had run for the past two years); JIGGCAL (the Computer Assisted Vocational Guidance currently used); the UKOU’s Personal and Career Development course and pack (E350/E730); professional recognition and other qualification areas, such as National Vocational Qualification key skills (now proposed by Dearing and the Government’s Green Paper “The Learning Age” for all HE students), or those held on the ECCTIS database of national provision

A Rationale:
Course Choice was a crucial area for many students, involving not only the selection of an individual course but planning a program of study to meet their personal or career needs. The process could be complex in the OU for a number of reasons:

The OU offered a modular curriculum, and for most awards or qualifications.

Team

Marion Phillips (Senior Counsellor, South Region)

Peter Scott (Lecturer, KMI)

Judith Fage (Regional Director, London Region)

Patrick Kelly (Assistant Director, Student Services (Planning))

Roberta Nathan