Cheryl Brown

• PhD Information Systems
• Professor (Associate) at University of Cape Town

Mandated to provide support to postgraduate students, the Office of Postgraduate Studies at the University of Cape Town operates in a context characterised by limited funding and resourcing, varied student preparedness for postgraduate study, and increasing student mobility. Extra-curricular academic and professional skills support is offered throu...

The Commonwealth Digital Education Leadership Training in Action (C-DELTA) is a long-term programme of COL to promote a digital education environment in Commonwealth Member Nations. This concept paper proposes a holistic approach to conceptualising digital education leadership. The C-DELTA programme will provide a framework for fostering digital le...

This paper conceptualises a holistic approach to digital education leadership, presenting the argument that digital education leadership is grounded in the practice that it seeks to foster (digital literacy practice) and the processes involved in teaching that practice (digital education). In other words, digital education leadership cannot be view...

In the last 20 years, the South African higher education has changed significantly, influenced by global trends national development goals and pressure from local educational imperatives, in the context of a digitally networked world. Shifts in technology enhanced pedagogical practices and in discourses around information and communication technolo...

As the boundaries between technology and social media have decreased, the potential for creative production or participatory practices have increased. However, the affordances of online content creation (OCC) are still taken up by a minority of internet users despite the opportunities offered for engagement and creativity. While previous studies ha...

The use of emerging technologies to support learning in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) is a global trend. However some emerging technologies are disruptive within educational practice as they create points of contradiction which force a need to adopt more authentic pedagogies which are 21 st Century aware and create a need to rethink the role...

Much focus has been given to the Net Generation and how they learn and interact with the world. In our Centre we faced the interesting challenge of working with Net Generation graduates, and inducting them into the world of work in the emerging field of educational technology. This paper reports on a three year intern program and describes experien...

This paper describes the habitus and technological practices of a South African rural student in his first year at university. This student is one of five self-declared rural students, from a group of 23 first-years in four South African universities, whose access to, and use of, technologies in their learning and everyday lives was investigated in...

This paper argues that history education is becoming dangerously obsolete, as it does not always relate to the contemporary needs of 21st century learners, who often find history useless and irrelevant to their present situation. This challenge is attributed to, among other reasons, the way history is taught through largely lecture-driven pedagogie...

Research into South African students' digitally mediated learning and social practices revealed a subgroup termed “digital strangers,” students lacking both experience and opportunities, who had barely used a computer and who did not have easy access to technology off campus. Using a Bourdieun framework, this group's technological habitus and acces...

Students require an increasing range of digital literacies to succeed academically in 21st Century (Beetham, Littlejohn and McGill 2010). For disadvantaged South African students this can be a challenge as many have not grown up with computers (Czerniewicz, Williams and Brown 2009). Whilst mobile phones are pervasive even in impoverished South Afri...

This paper follows two South African Media Studies university students and their activities as producers of online content. It considers the online publication services they chose to express media-related academic and creative interests outside of formal curriculum requirements. Through peer guidance and using online search, both students were able...

Social divides in South Africa remain deep and the digital divide is worsening with regards to access to broadband and to computers. Yet standard cell phone technologies are ubiquitous among university students, creating new forms of digital practices and offering possibilities of access to learning and to higher education itself. This chapter prov...

South African university students are on the frontline of a global world. Whether they are attending university in the rural Eastern Cape or urban Johannesburg, the social practice of using Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) has enabled virtual global mobility. The internet has opened up an opportunity for them to easily cross beyond...

This paper interrogates the currently pervasive discourse of the ‘net generation’ finding the concept of the ‘digital native’ especially problematic, both empirically and conceptually. We draw on a research project of South African higher education students' access to and use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to show that age is...

This chapter explores how an online conference can be productively used by educational technology professionals and educators who teach with technology in Africa to share and learn about tools, perspectives, and practices in the emerging field of educational technology with peers from across Africa and beyond. Communities of practice can play a key...

This article considers the problematic question of student plagiarism, its causes and manifestations, and how it is addressed in academic environments. A literature survey was conducted to establish how higher education institutions approach these issues, and a twofold investigation was conducted at the University of Cape Town. Data was gathered fr...

Drawing on Archer's perspectives on the agency/structure relationship, this paper explains situations where students in varied, challenging circumstances find ways to negotiate difficult conditions. It reports on a 2007 study undertaken through a survey at three quite different universities in three South African provinces, addressing inter-related...

This study describes the results of a survey and a description of instructional technologies in place in the social sciences in South African Universities. Lecturers in the social sciences reported a well-established practice of information and communication technologies (ICTs) use for general purposes (although frequent use tended to be for email...

This article investigates the relationship between policy (conceptualised as goals, values and resources), organisational culture and e-learning use. Through both qualitative and quantitative research methods, we gathered data about staff and student perspectives from four diverse South African universities representing a selection of ICT in educat...

Drawing on Archer’s perspectives on the agency / structure relationship, this paper explains situations where students in varied, challenging circumstances find ways to negotiate difficult conditions. The paper firstly reports specific findings of a study on student access and use of technology in three universities in South Africa; and then uses A...

This paper examines findings from two surveys of 10110 university students conducted in South Africa in 2004 and 2007, and explores a theoretical lens for taking the work further. We report on the differences between male and females students' access to and use of ICTs for learning. In particular we note that whilst equal opportunities do largely e...

Research from a survey of students in higher education institutions in the Western Cape has demonstrated that despite the difficulties being experienced in terms of access to Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in higher education, students report that they do indeed use computers for their learning. In this paper we explore the relat...

This paper reports on the findings of ICT access issues and social and academic uses in higher education, undertaken as part of a study in 2007 in three dissimilar South African higher education contexts. This diversity provided insight into a highly differentiated student body, varied contexts, different infrastructures and historically distinct b...

This paper reports on the findings of a survey of 3533 students regarding ICT use in six higher education institutions in four South African provinces. The findings indicate that students use ICTs in support of their studies and that the type of use has changed very little since a similar study conducted in 2004. Information seeking activities domi...

In this paper we describe South Africa's information and communication technologies (ICTs) infrastructure, highlight the issues South African Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) face in terms of ICT access and argue that a greater awareness of these issues can help us plan better e-learning interventions in Higher Education. We draw on recent rese...

In this paper we explore disciplinary differences in the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for teaching and learning in five higher education institutions in the South Africa. Drawing on data from 6 576 student questionnaires, we ascertain whether teaching and learning using ICTs conforms to or challenges existing conventiona...

Research from a survey of students in higher education institutions in the Western Cape has demonstrated that despite the difficulties being experienced in terms of access to Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in higher education, students report that they do indeed use computers for their learning. In this paper we explore the relat...

A study of access to and use of computers by 6 577 students and 515 academic staff in five South African universities found no gender differences at a broad level. Closer analysis revealed more subtle but distinct differences relating to practical access and personal agency, specifically autonomy, time, confidence, and interest. Disciplinary, socio...

This report is a regional study into the access to and use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in five higher education institutions in the Western Cape, South Africa. The investigation surveyed 6577 students and 515 academic staff. The framework for understanding access is based on a "thick" concept which understands access to fou...

Numerous South African policy documents support the use of ICTs in education, claiming that they can be beneficial to education, in a variety of ways. This article seeks to understand how ICTs are used in practice as part of teaching and learning, since access to ICTs alone does not ensure use, nor automatically add value. Through a regional study...

In the past few years, concepts of the digital divide and theories of access to ICT have evolved beyond a focus on the separation of the "haves" and the "have nots" to include more than just physical access to computers. Researchers have started considering the conditions or criteria for access and broadened the concept by including additional comp...

Our previous research amongst South African university students showed opportunities in a divided and unequal context for digital democracy in the form of a mobile society. While computer divides are manifest amongst South African university students, cell phone access is ubiquitous. In the light of this, we explored students' digital practices, es...

During March and April 2004 academic staff at 5 higher education institutions in the Western Cape, South Africa, responded to a survey on their access to ICT's and how they used them for teaching and learning1. This paper examines the responses to open ended questions from the survey. It describes how data was analysed using aspects of Miles & Hube...

In this paper we explore disciplinary differences in the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for teaching and learning in five higher education institutions in the Western Cape. We draw Laurilllard's conversational framework (2002) as a way of describing ICT use in terms of five key teaching and learning events and use Biglans...