Facilitators’ Comments on Aasignment Responses: A Challenge for Distance Educators at Domasi College of Education

Abstract

PCF3 // In any distance education system, facilitators’ comments on assignment responses play a crucial role. This is because the distance learners’ face-to-face contact with facilitators is minimal, and therefore academic support is carried out mainly by means of comments on assignment responses. // Domasi College of Education, which offers tertiary education by distance mode faces a lot of challenges in handling distance learners’ assignment responses. These challenges could be attributed to many factors. // Assignments from first, second and third year teacher learners were sampled. Most of the comments written by facilitators were not clear, not specific, too brief, demoralizing and misleading. Some assignments had question marks only; others just carried a mark without any comments and in other cases, sentences were just underlined with no explanation. // This paper explains why facilitators do not make constructive comments as is expected in distance education. It also explains how teacher learners can fully benefit from feedback as they study by distance.