ABSTRACT
Academic and non-academic support is largely carried out on the institution's premises even if the students study at home using distance education materials. Ultimately there is clearly little point in providing a student support service unless the quality of that service is appropriate and valued by students. One of the particular problems of a quality assurance process in open and distance learning (ODL) is the multivariate nature of the student experience. ODL institutions will need to set up assignment monitoring systems to assess both the marking standards and the quality of the correspondence tuition. Complaints are of course an important part of any quality appraisal mechanism and should be seen as vital to the institution and dealt with accordingly. Once suitable mechanisms have been found for appraising quality, there is the issue of setting quality standards which are reasonable from the students' perspective and effectively attainable by the institution.
