SERVICE at the Centre for External Studies (CES) at Unam is not up to standard.
Distance students deserve equal treatment like full-time students. CES students recently wrote exams without continuous assessment marks.
For a student to sit for an exam without receiving or being in the darkness of the continuous assignment mark (CA) or receiving assignment sheets demoralises a student, and it results in failure since the student has doubt about his or her CA.
What causes delays to display CA marks on students’ portals? Until now no CA marks have been posted on the portal, even after the exam results.
We registered with Unam for upgrading our qualifications and skills in those courses not for fun neither to waste our funds, time and energy.
There are many responsibilities to do than having fun at Unam. I am speaking on behalf of local government students who sat for their exams from 28 October until the 11th November 2014. I sat for my exams without CA marks. The CES instructed distance students to sit for exams without CA marks, but if a student did not qualify for exams then your exam marks were rendered null and void. This is just a waste of time and energy to study a subject you did not qualify for, instead to invest that time in those subjects you qualified for. What is the next step for assignments that we failed without having the second opportunity for resubmissions? Is there a chance for someone to resubmit his or her assignments since the exam results have been published? Resubmission is Unam’s policy and the delay is on Unam staff.
I quote the CES mission, “The Centre for External Studies (CES) is an academic centre of the University of Namibia established to ensure greater access to higher education and equity for students with various educational backgrounds. The Centre for External Studies strives to become the leading open and distance-learning centre in the country and beyond by enabling people to achieve their full potential through accessible, innovative and flexible learning. Its mission is to provide accessible quality higher education and to create opportunities for professional development to adult members of the community by providing open learning through distance and continuing education programmes.’’
These are the services distance students are missing from CES as they dedicate to provide to external students, hence they are established to ensure poor access to lower education and inequity for students with various educational backgrounds.
CES strives to become a leading open and distance-learning centre in the country and beyond by enabling people to achieve their full potential through accessible, innovative and flexible learning. But it fails to provide CA marks to students. They are not fulfilling the mission of the CES to provide accessible quality higher education and create opportunities for professional development to adult members of the community by providing open learning through distance and continuing education programmes. The CES is the opposite of its stated mission.
As distance students, we pay Unam’s CES to ensure they provide us with quality services but they do not provide these services for free therefore distance students demand and deserve quality service. We as distance-learning students are here to utilise the time as prescribed per course.
Samuelle Likholo
Unam student