245 © Unisa Press ISSN 0256-8853 Progressio 35 (2) 2013 pp 245–260 A contract of communal agreement for the Batswana student in distance education C. du Toit-Brits * Senior Lecturer Faculty of Educational Sciences e-mail: Charlene.dutoit@nwu.ac.za F. J. Potgieter *North-West University Potchefstroom Campus Potchefstroom, South Africa Abstract Education should be made available to students in order for them to select those qualifications and delivery types that would be best for them, at a particular stage and in particular circumstances, and the socially most useful and academically most valuable. Distance education (DE) is one such method of delivering education. The method of investigation was regarded as fundamentally interpretative and designed from the hermeneutic phenomenology, as it focused particularly on the world as it is lived and experienced by Batswana students, in order to establish why and how these Batswana students experience their studies. Their way of thinking and feeling about their studies in the Advanced Certificate of Education (ACE) is influenced by the face-to-face facilitated contact opportunities embedded within the distance division of the North-West University (NWU). These experiences affect the success of distance students at a traditional contact university. A qualitative research design was used. The research design used 17 semi-structured, open-ended individual interviews and three focus-group interviews. Interviews were administered to 32 teacher-students in the ACE programmes. Qualitative findings were interpreted to identify the reasons for why and how the Batswana students think and feel about facilitated contact opportunities during the distance study term. The reasons include feelings of mutual acceptance, the need for affective security, closeness, commitment and sincerity during scheduled contact sessions. Through this qualitative study it was established that despite various types of assistance provided for them in terms of teaching and learning, they insist on contact in their distance-type ACE programme. They prefer that all encounters should create an atmosphere of openness and sincerity in which students can confidently realise their right to existence within this particular community. The encounters should also provide these students with academic safety and security. Within the contact sessions, distance can be considered an initial communal agreement where the cohesion of belonging among participants may be created time and again, and maintained throughout the distance study process. *