**1. Introduction**

Most countries in the world prioritized the agenda to expand enrolments in HE through aggressive policy changes. The UN [1] contends that "Higher education (HE) across the world is in a state of change, quickly shifting from being the privilege of an elite few to

© 2016 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2018 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

mass participation, providing equal access to affordable and quality university education for all women and men, which is a global goal for 2030". Supporting this view, Tsiplakides [2] declares that HE has experienced a significant expansion in many countries and this resulted in the massification of this critical societal sector. Learning in higher education (HE) is accessed through different modes including distance, full time, or part time. Nitecki [3] maintains that the universities that provide open distance learning (ODL) programs rely on technology to make higher education more accessible to students.

conducted through electronic or print mediums. Allen and Seaman [11] define distance education as "that which uses one or more technologies to deliver instruction to students who are separated from the instructor and to support regular and substantive interaction between the students and the instructor synchronously or asynchronously". Teaching in ODL "encompasses a broad range of teaching, coaching, mentoring and monitoring activities that guide students through their courses, mediating the packaged learning materials and facilitating the learning process [12]". ODL settings by their nature provide learning opportunities to students who are mature and working and who are unable to acquire access education in full-time, contact, and

Improving Student Success Rate in Open Distance Learning Settings through the Principle...

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According to Chawinga and Zozie [14], ODL is the type of teaching and learning which does not include face-to-face interaction between the student and the lecturer, and Chawinga and Zozie [14] further argue that the main objective of introducing ODL is to provide education to those students who are geographically distanced from the lecturers. Anderson and Dron [15] contend that since ODL started operating decades ago, distance education experienced different changes, and to these scholars, distance education can be classified into three distinct generations. According to Biggs [16], "the first generation of distance education technology was by postal correspondence, this was followed by a second generation, defined by the mass media of television, radio, and film production. Third-generation distance education introduced interactive technologies, first audio, then text, video, and then web and immersive

Flowing from the assertions above, largely, teaching in an ODL context should not be traditionally pedagogical but also technological driven due to the nature of these institutions. This will help in improving students' graduation rate. In view of the above and given the nature of the distance instruction, Biggs [16] advocate for a distance education that is technologically mediated in order for it to reach students who are detached from the real classroom and also

Cain et al. [17] are the advocates of the principles of constructive alignment. The principles of constructivism to teaching were critical when the theory of constructive alignment was formulated. Cain et al. [17] identified two critical important concepts of the constructive alignment theory, namely constructivism and alignment. According to them, the former concept relates to students giving meaning to what they are learning through relevant learning activities and the latter deals with what the teachers are doing. Constructive alignment uses constructivism as a guiding philosophy [18]. Theorists who believe in constructivism view knowledge as a human construction, which denotes the combination of constructivist learning theories and the curriculum that is aligned [18]. Biggs [19] believes in the motto: "It is what the student learns that counts". The constructive alignment theory represents the idea that students should know in advance what is entailed in their learning, how they should learn, and how they are going to be tested in their learning [20, 21]. Cain and Babar [21] further argue that these principles advocate for teaching designed to involve students in learning activities,

campus-based institutions [13].

breach a gap between them and their teachers.

**3. Theorizing constructive alignment**

conferencing."

The phenomenon of Open and Distance Education is made possible by the advent of technological discoveries, which impact heavily on the mode of curriculum delivery. The challenge to the agenda of wider HE participation is whether the massive student enrolments are translated into success rates or are just statistics of wider HE participation. There are a number of factors that contribute toward low students' success rate. These factors include the following: students' underpreparedness and lack of contact with lecturers and working students [4]. This chapter does not intend to disregard some of the fundamental factors that are contributing to low success rates of students, but its focus is on the assumption that an ODL constructively aligned and technology-mediated teaching can improve students' success rates. The principles of constructive alignment have long been promoted as powerful approaches to facilitating enhanced student outcomes [5]. A number of sections constitute this chapter. In the next section, I explore what open and distance learning entail, and then the concept of constructive alignment will be theorized. The rest of the discussions include the following sections: perspectives on students' success rates in ODL contexts, benefits of students' success rates, the need for constructively aligned and technology-driven ODL curriculum, designing teaching strategies and assessment strategies, and finally the intended learning outcomes for improved student success rates.
