ODL institutions can also achieve the benefits offered by ECAs by making these a part of their academic calendar.įew studies have highlighted the importance of ECAs in open distance education ( Foley and Marr, 2019 Ruth, 2005). Along with enhancing the physical and mental abilities of students, ECAs provide multiple benefits to the concerning educational institutions including, student retention ( Flores-Gonzälez, 2000), better employability skills in students ( Lau et al., 2014), student motivation and student engagement ( Gunuc and Kuzu, 2015). Among various student-related issues, the most ignored one is extra-curricular activities (ECAs) in ODL. Although distance education in terms of policies, procedures and technologies has significantly emerged, few variables in the ODL chain are still missing or are in their infancy, “Student Affairs” is one of those variables ( Dare et al., 2005). But its existence has become inevitable during the last couple of years that have brought a revolutionary change in the perspective and policies of the education sector across the world due to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) ( Almaiah et al., 2020). ODL has been playing an essential role in disseminating education to the masses for many decades. Open and distance learning (ODL) has been proved to be a viable source for making education accessible at minimum cost to all, removing the boundaries of gender, age, economic status or physical proximity ( Bordoloi, 2018). The emergence of knowledge economies has made everyone realize that individuals must focus on continuous education to thrive in the current competitive environment ( Sharma, 2018). The full terms of this licence may be seen at Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Published in Asian Association of Open Universities Journal. Copyright © 2021, Saba Munir and Muhammad Zaheer License
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