Contextualizing South Africa’s participation in the SITES 2006 module

“…The role of free Wi-Fi in supporting current e-learning activities reflected the importance of VR software which was also available offline. The study further reflected that academics using VR should be considerate of the role of the Internet in the e-learning process, and thus cannot solely rely on VR applications requiring access to the Internet, especially with tasks required beyond the lecturer room (Blignaut, Els & Howie, 2010). Furthermore, with a combined total of 56% of students having reported that they had either limited, or no, experience with technology usage in higher education, this reflected on literature by Walker & Mkwananzi (2015), highlighting that students that are enrolled in higher education institutions, filter in from positions of extreme inequality.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 87%

Student Perceptions of Virtual Reality in Higher Education

Matome¹,

Jantjies²

2019

Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Cognition and Exploratory Learning in Digital Age (CELDA 2019)

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Continuous advancements in technology provide an opportunity for higher educational institutions to enhance the electronic learning experiences of students. Following a review of literature, this research explored student perceptions on the possible uses of virtual reality in their universities, as a way of easing their access to learning material. The research was conducted with the aim of answering the question of how virtual reality can be used to enhance learning, for higher learning institutions. Using a mixed-method research method, online surveys were distributed to registered university students in South Africa, using a simple random sampling strategy, to obtain a diverse and non-biased data set. The quantitative and qualitative responses were analyzed separately, before being triangulated, and used to inform the discussion and conclusion. Ultimately, the research found that although there are various benefits associated with the introduction of Virtual Reality-in South African Higher Education Institutions-the diverse population of participating students, and the varying differences in their socioeconomic statuses, would result in the inequitable distribution and usage of its resultant advantages.

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“…South Africa continues to achieve extremely poor results on international benchmarking tests of mathematics and science (Blignaut, Els, Howie, 2010;The Economist, 2014). In a bid to address this issue, the government has embarked on a nationwide programme to implement ICTs into schools with the intention of developing technologically literate students as well as developing mathematics understanding.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Teachers’ Perceptions of Pedagogical Change with Information Communication Technologies in No-fee Primary Schools in a Developing Context: A Cultural Historical Activity Theory Analysis

Hardman¹

2019

JESP

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Research indicates that Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) impact positively on students' attainment in primary school mathematics classrooms, depending on the nature of the pedagogy used (Higgins, Xiao, & Katsipataki, 2012). However, how ICTs are used pedagogically depends on how teachers perceive them (Bray & Tangney, 2017). Over the past decade, South Africa has invested heavily in ICTs in education, in the hopes that their use may impact positively on extremely low outcomes that are recorded in mathematics and reading in the country (Spaull, 2013). This investment, however, has not paid dividends, calling into question exactly how ICTs are used in teaching/learning in this context. This paper seeks to address teachers' perceptions of teaching with ICTs in order to ascertain whether teachers do indeed use ICTs in their classrooms and whether they believe this changes their pedagogy thereby impacting positively on outcomes in mathematics at a grade 6 level. Interviews with 6 teachers across 4 non-fee-paying schools, using Cultural Historical Activity Theory as a frame, indicated that teachers do indeed believe that their pedagogy has shifted with the use of ICTs and that this has had a positive impact on mathematics learning.

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Contextualizing South Africa’s participation in the SITES 2006 module

Cited by 9 publications

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Student Perceptions of Virtual Reality in Higher Education

Student Perceptions of Virtual Reality in Higher Education

Student Perceptions of Virtual Reality in Higher Education

Teachers’ Perceptions of Pedagogical Change with Information Communication Technologies in No-fee Primary Schools in a Developing Context: A Cultural Historical Activity Theory Analysis

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