The University of South Africa (Unisa) was the first university in the world to teach at a distance. It initially started as what Taylor (2001) has labelled ‘first generation or correspondence education’. Over the years, it gradually added elements of technology and engaged in more contact with its students. Essentially, however, these were add-ons, and neither was properly integrated with the academic endeavours of the university. Nor were they used effectively. The merger between Unisa, the Technikon South Africa (TSA) and the distance education (DE) campus of Vista University (Vudec) in 2004 created a single, dedicated DE institution for South Africa.

It is interesting to note that, over the past two decades, the Unisa student profile has shifted from that of the traditional working adult to that of the younger person who registers at Unisa immediately after leaving school, largely for reasons of access. The change in the student profile at Unisa also brings to the fore the issues of effective student support and factors relating to drop-out. Student performance is influenced by a number of factors. Students who receive no support are likely to delay completion of a programme or drop-out altogether.

The importance of effective support

Effective student support, that is, the assistance and guidance that students are offered, has often been an overlooked component in the DE system. Student support is important for many reasons: it can improve enrolment figures, decrease drop-out rates and contribute to academic success. There are a number of questions that one can ask, especially if we want strategies that will improve the effectiveness of the student support services. This chapter is an attempt to answer the following questions:

• • What provisions are made for providing student support services in open and distance learning (ODL) universities and how useful are these services?

• • What do students feel about the quality of the services provided?

• • Why is there a feeling that the support services provided by contact universities are better than those in ODL universities?

Student support systems (SSS) have now become an integral part of most of the good DE institutions. The issue of effective SSS becomes pertinent here: these services provide the correct support needed to learn with no limitations, not only for distance students, who generally study in isolation away from the institution, but also for lecturers and fellow students.