Technology and Tuition: The Challenge of the ODL Student in a Third World Country

The University of South Africa (Unisa) is one of the world’s largest ‘mega universities’ with a population of more than 250 000 students. The Department of Marketing and Retail Management (DMRM) is one of six academic departments within the School of Management Sciences, which in turn is one of three Schools within the College of Economic and Management Sciences, the largest College within Unisa. One such challenge is to decide on what technology to use to deliver and support learning amongst the DMRM’s students. The process of choosing one or more technologies to adopt as a preferred learning technology within the DMRM can either be done by drawing on the current thinking on this topic in the academic literature, by speaking with peers and other educational and technology experts, by asking the lecturers involved in the everyday delivery of this education, or by surveying students themselves. This study focuses on the lecturers’ perspectives. The Unisa lecturer, after all, is the key driver behind the delivery of education within the DMRM and will be instrumental in the successful adoption of any technology decided on. Their views were obtained using the Delphi methodology and analysed using a Chi-square analysis. The findings suggest that a learning management system is considered by lecturers as the preferred technology to use.

Keywords – learning technologies, higher education, learning
management systems (LMS)