Instituto Aragonés de Ciencias de la Salud (IACS)

2.4.3.4

The social context indicates the effects of other persons present and the related interpersonal interactions.The organisational environment has an effect on the usability and UX of a product. The attitudes of the organisation and its employees towards the system, the structure of the organisation, the way people work, the availability of support and frequency of interruptions, are also likely to affect the usability of a product (Maguire, 2001a).

Unisa is currently Africa’s largest comprehensive dedicated open distance education university. The University offers a range of study choices, ranging from undergraduate degrees and diplomas, to Master’s and PhD degrees. The University has eight colleges, the Colleges of Graduate Studies; Agriculture and Environmental Sciences; Economic and Management Sciences (where the Graduate School of Business Leadership (SBL) is incorporated); Accounting Sciences; Education; Human Sciences; Law; and Science, Engineering and Technology. There are approximately 350 000 registered students per year and approximately 1 500 permanent academic lecturing staff who offers courses.

E. de Kock - MSc Dissertation

48 VLE workshops are offered by the Centre for Professional Development (CPD) at Unisa, for training in the use of the myUnisa LMS. The intention here is to teach and support the academic lecturers in the use and facilitation of the online activities, tasks, interaction and communication tools. The CPD provides on-going support and training, but reported that they experience staffing issues and find attending to all training requests a challenge (Louw, 2011).

Since the teaching environment is an ODL institution which uses e-learning as a way of teaching it has an influence on the organisational practises and protocols. As stated by Maguire (2001a) it could influence attitude of employees, work circumstances, availability of support, interruptions and usability of the system. Consequently it will be discussed in the following sub-sections a) Open Distance Learning and b) E-learning.

a) Open Distance Learning

Open learning is described as “an approach to learning that gives students flexibility and choice over what, when, where, at what pace and how they learn. Open learning is all encompassing and includes distance education, resource-based learning, correspondence learning, flexi-study and self- paced study” (Unisa Council, 2008:2). Distance education is defined by the Commonwealth of Learning Organisation (COL) as the delivery of learning with a variety of facilitating methods used to transfer content, to provide tuition unobstructed by time and space and to measure outcomes (CoL, 1999).

ODL “is a multi-dimensional concept aimed at bridging the time, geographical, economic, social, educational and communication distance between student and institution, student and academic staff, student and courseware and student and peers. ODL focuses on removing barriers to access learning, flexibility of learning provision, student-centeredness, supporting students and constructing learning programmes with the expectation that students can succeed” (Unisa Council 2008:2). According to the Commonwealth of Learning Organisation the meaning of ODL embraces several implications, as it allows access to learning with minimum barriers with respect to age, gender, or time constraints and with opportunities of recognition of prior learning (CoL, 1999).

According to Unisa’s ODL Policy (Unisa, 2008) there are certain principles to adhere to in the ODL model. Those principles that are applicable to the use of online delivery of courseware inter alia include advanced teaching and learning models; well-designed courseware; effective/efficient administration and timeous student support; and online distribution of content and information via myUnisa. Diverse technologies that will contribute to Unisa’s educational disposition are to be included in the delivery of courseware. It emphasises that the appropriate use of technology is vital

E. de Kock - MSc Dissertation

49 to the survival of the institution as a global role player. The technology platform provides opportunities for staff and students to interact with each other and the institution anytime and from anywhere in the world. The policy states that the University will depend on well-defined processes, procedures and robust organisational systems supported by ICT and the University will evaluate and develop its technology infrastructure and ODL capacities of academics on an on-going basis in order to give effect to its ODL mission.

Most of the academic lecturers are expected to work in an allocated office on the campus at Unisa. The offices are mainly situated on the two main campuses that are located in two cities in the province of Gauteng, South Africa. The University’s main campus is in Muckleneuk, Pretoria, where six of the eight colleges are situated. The other main campus is situated in Florida, Roodepoort, where the College for Science, Engineering and Technology, as well as the College for Agriculture and Environmental Studies are located. Most of the lecturers work in their own offices on desktop personal computers or on laptops where all staff members have internet access with cable and/or Wi-Fi.

b) E-learning

Complementary to ODL is e-learning, which is the application of ICTs to enhance distance education, implement open learning policies, strategies, more flexibility and enable extensively distributed learning activities (Davis & Wong, 2007; Roby et al., 2013). The ‘e’ in e-learning refers to electronic, which adds a technological edge to learning as a term.

E-learning is defined as learning that is supported by ICTs by instruction which includes content relevant to the learning objective, uses instructional methods and builds knowledge and skills (Clark & Mayer, 2008). The objective of e-learning is to support learning in an educationally effective manner. Therefore, the contents and teaching strategies must be modified in order to fully exploit the obtainable technologies. Ardito et al. (2005) differentiate between the platform and the didactic component of an e-learning application. They propose that the e-learning platform is “the environment with a number of integrated tools and services for teaching, learning, communicating and managing learning material” (Ardito et al., 2005:276). The didactic component of e-learning is the educational content provided or delivered via the platform. The platform is thus the vehicle of delivery of educational content.

De Villiers (2005) proposed the Hexa-C Metamodel (HCMm) which integrates concepts from learning theory into a framework which can be used for evaluating e-learning resources and educational technology from the viewpoint of learning theory. Three of the concepts, namely constructivism,

E. de Kock - MSc Dissertation

50 cognitive learning theory and components, are primarily theoretical, while the others, that is collaborative learning, creativity and customization, are applied methods to be used by educators to support effective learning. This designates technology's role as the instrument that transfers the message, but not the message itself. According to this proposed Hexa-C Metamodel, these components are rooted in context. Therefore, the nature of each e-learning environment should be determined by its content and situation.