Mapping Organizational Noise and Communication Reliability in a Mega Open University
Contributors
- Dr. Sidra Rizwan Assistant Professor, Secondary Teacher Education Department, Allama Iqbal Open University, Islamabad, Pakistan.
- Samiya Ashfaq PhD Scholar, Secondary Teacher Education Department, Allama Iqbal Open University, Islamabad, Pakistan.
Abstract
Open and distance learning (ODL) is delivered through institutional communication, yet the dependability of that communication is rarely studied as a property of the system. Research tends to treat platform usability, administrative service and language accessibility as separate concerns, so their combined effect on a single learner is seldom examined. This study specifies “organizational noise” as interference distributed across environmental, technological, cultural and linguistic domains to map communication reliability in a mega open university. A convergent mixed-methods design was implemented at Allama Iqbal Open University (AIOU), Pakistan, a distance-mode teaching institution enrolling more than one million students annually across 56 regional campuses. Survey data were collected from 480 undergraduate ODL students through stratified random sampling across three faculties, while six students, two from each faculty, participated in semi-structured interviews. Survey responses were summarised descriptively, interview data were analysed thematically, and findings were integrated at the interpretation stage. The findings indicate that students experienced official institutional communication as generally present but unevenly dependable. Notifications could be timely or delayed, platform usability ratings could be highly positive despite serious congestion during peak submission periods, parallel authentication systems could fail to grant access, digital access remained uneven between urban and rural students, and formal English created difficulties for students requesting clarification in simpler terms. These disruptions tended to accumulate rather than occur as individual technical failures. The study concludes that communication reliability in institutions of this scale is a condition of access rather than merely a service supporting it.
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Corresponding Author
Dr. Sidra Rizwan
Assistant Professor, Secondary Teacher Education Department, Allama Iqbal Open University, Islamabad, Pakistan.
Corresponding Author: [email protected]
