ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines some of the principles underlying academic support in Open and distance learning. Like non-academic support, tuition covers a wide range of activities. Informal assessment means feeding back to students some sense of the progress they are making in a course. Formal assessment can be carried out by the course material through assignments that are marked by computer. There are intelligent programs that not only mark answers as right or wrong but can also provide standard feedback depending on the wrongness of the answer. Progress monitoring is particularly important as it is one of the few student support activities that directly addresses the complex but vital area of student motivation — one of the qualities that was mentioned at the outset. Informal assessment means feeding back to students some sense of the progress they are making in a course.
