TNU's Academic Internet Call Center

The Call Center is an academic on-line hub providing direct and continuous communication between students and supervisors. The center is permanently staffed by Ph.D. students and teachers from the university. Communication is facilitated by email and a web-based discussion platform. The dialogue that is entered into with the student is done from the perspective that s/he is a resource person who does not experience the material from a distance but, in close collaboration with fellow students and supervisors, is active in constructing his/her own knowledge base.

The core aims of the call center are:

• to create a personal profile of the learning history of each student and thus ensure that learning problems can be identified early and potential obstacles can be overcome efficiently
• to provide students with direct and immediate feedback on their personal learning trajectory
• to promote high level academic interaction amongst students and between students, supervisors and experts
• to filter intelligent contributions and comments made by the students and feed these back into the academic programmes to ensure that the programmes are constantly improved and enriched.

The academic call-center gives the participants, during the whole course, direct feedback on their participation. The call center provides a level of intensive supervision and mentoring that can not be offered by a regular program.