Virtual Initiatives in South Africa

SAKAI Project

Several South African Universities or Colleges participate in an international initiative to develop the open source collaboration and learning environment “Sakai”:

• University of Cape Town, status: production
• North-West University, status: production
• Gert Sibande FET College, status: pilot
• Midrand Graduate Institute, status: pilot
• University of South Africa (UNISA), status: production

Dunia Moja: Mobile Learning

Dunia Moja, or one earth in Swahili, seeks to use “mobile technologies to connect international students and faculty to stimulate learning and debate in environmental sciences”. This innovative project, piloted in 2007, was a collaboration between Stanford University and three African academic institutions—the University of the Western Cape in South Africa, Mweka College of African Wildlife Management in Tanzania, and Makerere University in Uganda. The project used high-end PDAs to allow students to download and watch video lectures from academic staff in each of the partner universities, and contribute to the discussion and debate through mobile blogging to a central website. The course was centred around global environmental issues and their impact on the African continent and the United States, and brought local perspectives and viewpoints to bear on the course topics. Faculty and students from the four participating institutions electronically shared course materials, exchanged information, and contributed their own course content. In m-learning in developing countries, Dunia Moja is a pioneering first. As these three interventions (and there are many more out there) show, much is possible if you have higher-end devices and a fast, reliable data network at your disposal. In the land of plenty the sky really is the limit. In the land of less, however, we have fewer choices. Source: Education for a Digital World: Advice, Guidelines, and Effective Practice from Around the Globe, by BCcampus and Commonwealth of Learning, 2008, (PDF), p.55, ISBN: 978-1-894975-29-2

Documents of relevance

• “SOUTH AFRICA: Universities not far behind the curve”, Karen MacGregor, 10 August 2008
• “Enhancing the contribution of Distance Higher Education in South Africa”, a Report of an investigation led by the South African Institute for Distance Education, 2004
• “Policy Advice Report: Advice to the Minister of Education on Aspects of Distance Education Provision in South African Higher Education”, 2004
• wiki page Distance Education/Open Learning on WikiEducator.org

List of eLearning Initiatives / Programmes

This list also includes Virtual Programmes with limited contact hours.

• The African Virtual University has its own wiki page

• The Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU): 2 Masters programmes, The Masters programme of the Department for Development Studies and the Masters Degree in Taxation are offered on a mixed mode basis of block contact sessions in combination with distance learning. The web page on the first semi-distance programme states that once per semester, students meet for two to three weeks of intensive tuition after which three months of self-study follow.

• North-West University (NWU) is the result of a merge between University of North-West and the Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education. In 2008, the NWU is the sixth largest university in the country, with approximately 52 000 students enrolled at all three campuses. Some 24 000 of these students are distance learning students.

• Rhodes University offers a few certificates through semi-distance education (four five-day blocks of contact time per year).

• Tshwane University of Technology has its own wiki page

• University of Cape Town (UCT), South Africa's oldest university, enables e-learning through the online learning environment Vula and LearnOnline Self-training Courses. Vula means Open! and is a local name for SAKAI, an international open-source Learning Management System. Vula offers learning materials, to download these for printing, to participate in asynchronous bulletin board discussions, synchronous chat groups, and to do exercises and online tests from time to time. One of the flexible courses UCT offers is the Postgraduate Diploma in Occupational Health

• The University of Fort Hare is a small university (approximately 5000 students) but an innovating University, which even has an SMS system to get your results or fee balance.

Together with the Eastern Cape Department of Education it created The Fort Hare Distance Education Project, a project to educate teachers in rural classrooms.

Resources:

• “Creating A Relationship: A Discourse Analysis Focusing on the Construction of Identities and Relationships in Distance Education Materials for a Teacher Upgrade Programme”, A Rhodes University’s Thesis in 2004 by Caroline van der Mescht (PDF, 145 pages)
• Digital Education Enhancement Project (DEEP)

• The University of the Free State has a Division e-Learning: “At the UFS e-learning includes online courses, learning objects, blended learning, (which combines online resources with face-to-face interactions), performance support, knowledge management, self-assessment, communities of practice (online educational communities) and other online resources that encourage learners to assess, improve, or change their knowledge or clinical performance.” Among these things the site also lists a few resources for the educators and e-learning module makers.

• University of KwaZulu-Natal is the result of the merge between the University of Durban-Westville and the University of Natal. It offers Distance Learning Honours in Accounting Programme in 2009 according to “Accounting Distance Learning”

• The University of Pretoria has its own full-fledged client services centre for its students and lists its distance possibilities in this document: Distance Education 2008. Students can receive an Advanced Certificate in Education (ACE) with specialisation in Education Management or Special Needs Education and a Degree in BEd(Hons) Education Management, Law and Policy.

• The University of South Africa (UNISA) merged with Technikon Southern Africa and incorporated the distance education component of Vista University (VUDEC) to form the new UNISA. UNISA focuses on adult education and had more than 223 000 students in 2006 and approximately 6 900 different courses. MyUNISA is its portal for student services, and SAKAI is its learning management system. It has got its own wiki page.

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