IDIA2009 Conference
Distance Education as enabler in crossing the digital divide: Will the Phoenix Fly?
Judy van Biljon
School of Computing, University of South Africa
Karen Renaud
Department of Computing Science, University of Glasgow
Abstract
Education powered by technology, has been hailed as the silver bullet for empowering developing communities to cross the digital divides. The path to success becomes obscured by the complexities of crossing these divides, but the objective remains paramount. Our particular focus is on distance education, and the particular challenges of designing technology for this context. For some students, such as those from rural communities, distance education is often the only feasible option of gaining an education, with technology as the enabler. The ideal approach would be to study the adoption of these approaches in developed countries and then leapfrog over the problems encountered – effectively learning from their experiences. This, however, assumes a linear adoption path towards success and sustainability. In contrast, existing literature shows a ‘rise-fall-plateau-rebirth’ progression that has been likened to the mythical Phoenix bird that is supposed to die by fire in order to be reborn from its own ashes (Romiszowski, 2004). It is possible that the pitfalls sabotage the adoption process to such an extent that the entire process appears to terminate, before re-emerging once again, quite unexpectedly, later. This raises the question: “Can ICT supported education benefit from the experiences of others, effectively leapfrogging over pitfalls and sustaining a steady adoption process, or will it have to follow the same Phoenix-like pattern of adoption?” In an attempt to shed some light on this conundrum, we consider the adoption of a learning management system by distance education students in South Africa. This study reviews the needs, limitations and expectations of distance education students as well as technology adoption factors. Based on this research, mostly form research in developed countries, we conducted a survey with a number of distance education students from a distance education course at a South African university. The aim of the survey is to verify the importance of the identified technology adoption factors in the context of a developing country. Our results confirm that distance education students, like their counterparts in developed countries, are influenced by ease of use, usefulness, and social factors. Furthermore, we found a preference for facilities that support the activities of the Net-generation. The main contribution is to consider factors that could be useful in supporting e-learning in developing contexts. The research draws on concepts and existing models from sociology, computer-supported cooperative work, human-computer interaction and technology adoption models from the field of business information systems. The identified factors and issues will be of value to researchers in the field of LMSs, administrators and faculty who have to choose an appropriate LMS and manage the adoption thereof. Other beneficiaries could be distance learning course developers interested in more effective knowledge transfer.
