ENHANCING STUDENT INVOLVEMENT THROUGH SUPPORT SERVICES OFFERED CASE OF DISTANCE EDUCATION IN SRI LANKA

Abstract

Attached

is ance education encourages lifelong learning especially for those who have inner quest for higher education yet have missed the opportunity due to one or more reasons. Despite the popularity and demand, the system has been suffering from inherent and critical issues as higher student dropout rate, longer completion time of study programmes by students and comparatively low academic performance. Even though suggestions to overcome these issues by previous studies focus on services offered by distant education institutes, they alone cannot overcome them as It requires students to involve in academic matters since in distance education system, self-responsibility towards academic activities is crucial. Therefore, this paper investigates the impact of support services on student involvement in distance education in Sri Lanka and, examines whether this impact is mediated by student experience quality. For this purpose, quantitative research approach based on crosssectional survey design was used. Data were collected using a structured questionnaire. Sample consisted of 400 undergraduates of the Open University of Sri Lanka, drawn using simple random sampling technique. Data which were analyzed using Structural Equation Modeling revealed that there is a direct impact of support services on student involvement. Mediating effect was substantiated where it partially mediates the impact of support services on student involvement. The validated model after data analysis is a novel model unique to the distance education. Further, findings facilitate in service designing process and thereby enable to address the prevailing issues in the distance education context. Thus, the study is enriched with number of implications in terms of theoretical, managerial and societal.