Abstract
Online-supported teaching and learning is a technological innovation in education that integrates face-to-face teaching in plenary lectures, with an online component using a learning management system. This extends opportunities to students to interact with one another via online chats in the process of transacting their learning. There is a need to understand how South African students experience these technologies, where many students encounter them for the first time at higher education level. We are yet to understand variations in students’ experiences of online support and how it has influenced their learning. This article explores students’ experiences of learning using online chats in Business Management Education. The qualitative component of this mixed-methods research draws on the tenets of phenomenography. Fifteen participants from a Business Management Education class of 156 students enrolled in a Bachelor of Education programme were sampled using pheno-menographic approach. Qualitative data sources included personal reflective journals, focus group discussions and individual interviews, and questionnaires were circulated to the respondents. A quantitative component was subsequently implemented to validate the qualitative findings. Analysis of the data revealed that participants viewed online chats as learning contexts in qualitatively different ways. Keywords: learning management system; online chats; online-supported teaching and learning
Highlights
Introduction and BackgroundIn the last few decades, South Africa’s higher education system has made significant progress towards alleviating the inequalities emanating from the apartheid regime (Moloi, Mkwanazi & Bojabotseha, 2014)
For the purposes of this article, one finding that emerged from the study will be presented and discussed to illuminate some of the varied experiences of participants who engaged with learning using online chats in Business Management Education (BME)
Online Chats as Learning Contexts Qualitative data that emerged from personal reflective journals, the focus group discussion (FGD) and interviews suggested that online chats served as repositories of knowledge that students could use at a later stage
Summary
Introduction and BackgroundIn the last few decades, South Africa’s higher education system has made significant progress towards alleviating the inequalities emanating from the apartheid regime (Moloi, Mkwanazi & Bojabotseha, 2014). New challenges have emerged which pose a threat to higher education in a country where inequalities are a product of race, gender and division of society into classes (Moloi et al, 2014) These challenges include the uneven distribution of resources in the secondary education sector, rendering the vast majority of the output of this sector not ready for the challenging task that students entering university face. The Higher Education Act 101 of 1997 (Department of Education, 2001) provides for the massification of higher education in South Africa, to address the constrained access to higher education that deprived the historically disadvantaged communities of study opportunities during apartheid This has contributed to a multitude of students gaining entry into universities, giving rise to the challenge of how to conduct teaching and learning in overcrowded contexts without losing efficiency (Machika et al, 2014). Social transformation in education in South Africa has, as one of its guidelines, the increase in demographic representation among those completing their qualifications, and a narrowing of the demographic gap between student intake and graduate throughput (Jaffer et al, 2007)
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