Table 5.6: Percentage of students who never or rarely use a particular media form; conversely, how many use a particular media form at least occasionally as part of their course
Media form Valid n
Responded “never”
or “rarely” to all activities
At least one activity used occasionally or more frequently4
Interactive 5553 3% 97%
Communicative 3671 25% 75%
Adaptive 3466 20% 80%
Productive 6576 0% 100%
Table 5.7: Number of teaching and learning events for which students report being asked to use a computer
Requirement Count Percent
Not required 215 3.8%
Required for one event 1050 18.6%
Required for two events 2911 51.7%
Required for all 1444 25.6%
(n) 5620
This raises the question of how staff’s requirements for students to use computers affect students’ frequency of use.
Table 5.8 demonstrates that when students are not required to use computers at all by staff, they exhibit more infrequent use themselves (88%) and conversely when students are required to use a computer for all teaching and learning events, they use a computer more frequently themselves (60%).
However, 38% of students had an average frequency of use, even when only asked to use a computer for one teaching and learning event. This corroborates our earlier suggestion that students do use a computer more frequently than asked to. However, our findings also indicate that staff requirements are a driving force behind student frequency of use.
Table 5.9 summarises the variety of use across the teaching and learning events. It shows that overall, 21% of students do not have much variety of use, as they use a computer for only one teaching or learning event. The majority (54%) use a computer for two teaching and learning events, and 25%
are highly varied, using a computer across all three or more teaching and learning events.
Table 5.10 shows an interesting association between staff requirement for use and student variation of use. When staff require use of computers across teaching and learning events there is a far greater variation of use by students (86%). This is as opposed to when staff do not require use of a computer or only require it for one event when there is unvaried use (between 88% and 100%).
There are some key observations regarding take-up of computer use in higher education in the Western Cape.
Firstly, take-up does not appear to be driven only by lecturer requirements within courses, although indications are that this does encourage higher frequency of use. Take-up also seems to occur as students use computers as part of their own learning activities. However, variation of use does seem to be strongly related to lecturer requirements. Secondly, it seems that staff use computers less often themselves than they expect students to use them. These results are tantalising, and further research on what drives students to use computers independently for their learning is needed.
5.2.4 Teaching and learning events most often used in conjunction with computers
In this section we examine how computers are used to support the four teaching and learning events described in Table 5.1, namely discovery, dialogue, practice and creation.
The event of acquisition was not examined in terms of overall use as it only pertains to academic staff and not to
Table 5.8: Frequency of student use compared to extent to which academic staff require students to use ICTs for learning.
Requirement Infrequent Average Frequent
Not required 88% 12% 0% 1%
Required for one
event 62% 38% 0% 19%
Required for two
events 5% 88% 7% 54%
Required for all 0% 40% 60% 27%
(n) 818 2524 1068 5428
Table 5.9: Variation of students’ use of computers
Requirement Count Percent
Unvaried 1206 21%
Varied 1404 25%
Varied across two 3053 54%
(n) 5663
Table 5.10: Relationship between staff requirements and student variation of use
Unvaried Varied Across two
Required for all events 0% 86% 14%
Required for two
events 5% 5% 90%
Required for one event 88% 0% 12%
Not required 100% 0% 0%
staff and students. However, a detailed description of this event is provided in section 5.2.5.
Computers are most frequently used by staff and students to support the event of discovery (Figure 5.3). The types of media forms which support this event are multimedia resources such as CD-ROM or DVD, and Web resources which include hypertext, enhanced hypermedia5 and information gateways. This study found that, overall, 90%
of staff and 92% of students report that they use computer-based interactive media for teaching or learning. This is consistent across all disciplines.
The next most frequently reported use of computers is for the teaching and learning event of creation (Figure 5.3).
Computer affordances offer the potential for user control and intervention, enabling users to make, create and change material online. We found that 63% of students and 66% of staff report using computers as part of an activity to create something.
Using computers for dialogue has been argued to be one of the most significant offerings of the networked computer
terrain (Baillie and Percoco 2001), and indeed accounts for the shift from the term IT (information technology) to the current ICT (information and communication technologies).
Yet the use of computer-based communicative media forms is not widespread in our findings. Figure 5.3 shows that only 55% of students are asked to use a computer for communicating as part of their courses, and the frequency of use for specific activities is surprisingly low.
Computers are often touted as being unique in offering opportunities for practice, self-paced learning, feedback, drill and practice, and automated feedback (Cantoni, Cellario et al. 2004). Yet computers in our region are not being exploited very extensively for the event, with only 51% of staff and 52% students reporting use of computers for this kind of event.
In conclusion, we can see that computers are used most frequently for the event of discovery and creation. These events are closely associated with online content and with activities such as the writing of assignments, as explained later. There is overall a less frequent use of computers in association with dialogue and practice.
92% 90%
55%
66%
52% 51%
63% 66%
0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
Interactive Communicative Adaptive Productive
Discovery Dialogue Practice Creation
Student Academics