Academic literature on the topic 'Electronic information resources – Study and teaching (Higher) – South Africa'

NOTE: THIS ARTICLE WAS PUBLISHED WITH THE INFORMING SCIENCE INSTITUTE. Aim/Purpose................................................................................................................................................................................................. The main aim of the study is to critically examine the forces that can impede or support students to use e-learning in higher education teaching and learning environment which require not only pre-technological literacy’s but easy access to the e-learning platform and ICT devices. Background................................................................................................................................................................................................. The concept of e-learning has grown considerably in the past three or four decades, which according to Pollock and Cornford, (2003) has prompted a great deal of interest in using and integration of technology into teaching and learning environment thereby transforming the very nature of the traditional higher education system. Murphy et al (2001) have highlighted that not only does the new technologies supplement the conventional course delivery in institutions of higher learning, but they have also become a catalyst for change in higher education. South Africa as a developing nation has adopted the introduction of ICTs in the education system with the hope that it may offer some solutions to the challenges of education in South Africa. The South African Department of Education believes that developments in ICTs and its introduction to the education system creates access to learning opportunities, redresses inequalities, improve the quality of learning and teaching, and deliver lifelong learning (Department of Education, 2004). Even though internet access and ICT devices are becoming more common in South Africa, the use of them for teaching and learning purposes are limited. According to the White Paper on E-education in South Africa (SA, 2004), the Province of Eastern Cape has ranked lowest in terms of number of schools with computers for teaching and learning and as a result many students from Eastern Cape Province who enter higher education do not have adequate technological literacy levels to cope with the demands of higher education teaching and learning environment. Methodology................................................................................................................................................................................................. The design of the study was a case study and it utilized quantitative method. The number of sample units in the study was 65 students from Walter Sisulu University, University of South Africa, Pearson Institute of Higher Education (formerly called CTI) and University of Fort Hare campuses based in East London Eastern Cape Province South Africa. The data were analyzed using MS Excel spreadsheet database for conversion into percentages for the descriptive statistics. Contribution................................................................................................................................................................................................. It is essential to understand the forces that can impede or support e-learning. Possible solutions can be suggested for successfully integrating e-learning into higher education teaching and learning environment to meet 21st century students’ needs. The South Africa case study identified that a number of respondents indicated that the resources are available for e-learning on their university campuses. But these available resources are not efficiently used by most respondents to support their studies. Findings......................................................................................................................................................................................................... The results indicated that in the area of infrastructure required for e-learning, the majority of respondents indicated that the resources are available for e-learning on the campuses of the sampled universities. But these available re-sources are not efficiently utilized by respondents to support their studies. Recommendations for Practitioners............................................................................................................................................................... While universities and other institutions of higher education are encouraging integration of e-learning into the curriculum, it is also imperative that their teaching and learning strategies and policies take into account that some students are unevenly challenged in terms of technological skills and still require additional support. Recommendation for Researchers................................................................................................................................................................ There is the need to explore in depth the aspects that lead to the successful integration of e-learning into conventional lecture method of courses delivery. Impact on Society........................................................................................................................................................................................... With the dawn of 21st century digital and knowledge-based economies evolution where the integration of computers and other ICTs tools in higher education teaching and learning environments have been found to be very beneficial to students, hence not only pre-technological literacy’s of students but easy access to the e-learning platform and ICT devices are critical to higher education learning environment. Assessing students technological skills and access to e-learning platforms to which this study contributes will assist in improving quality education which has a greater impact on society. Future Research............................................................................................................................................................................................... In the context in which this study was conducted further examination of the technological skills of academic staff of the successful integration of e-learning into curriculum would be advisable.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to report the training of college librarians, academic and management staff, IT managers and students on how to organise, manage and use a user-friendly library. In Uganda, as in many countries, the problem is that school and/or college libraries are managed by librarians who may have good cataloguing and management skills, but who do not have the pedagogic skills and knowledge of the school curricula that are necessary for librarians to be able to guide and mentor both teachers and students or organise curriculum-related activities or facilitate research. The development of user-friendly libraries contributes in improving education quality through nurturing the interest of students and teachers in literacy activities and active search for knowledge. Under the stewardship of the Belgium Technical Cooperation and the Ministry of Education in Uganda, library stakeholders were trained on how to put users – rather than themselves – in the centre of the library’s operations and introduced to active teaching and learning methodologies and activities with emphasis on getting engaged in transforming spaces, services, outreach to users and collections. Several measures, short and long term were taken to address the gaps limiting the performance of the librarians. Given the disparities in the trainees’ education level and work experience, the training was delivered in seven modules divided into three units for over eight months in 2015. By the end of the training, trainees developed unique library strategic plan, library policies and procedures, capacity to use library systems, physical design and maintenance systems, partnerships, library structure and staff job descriptions. Design/methodology/approach To effectively engage the participants each topic was conducted using active teaching and learning (ATL) methodologies, including: lecture with slides and hands-on practice – each topic was introduced in a lecture form with slides and hands-on exercises. The main goal was to introduce the participants to the concepts discussed, offer opportunities to explore alternative approaches, as well define boundaries for discussion through brainstorming. The question-answer approach kept the participants alert and to start thinking critically on the topic discussed – brainstorming sessions allowed thinking beyond the presentation room, drawing from personal experiences to provide alternatives to anticipated challenges. The goal here was for the participants to provide individual choices and approaches for real life problems; group discussions: case study/ scenario and participant presentations – participants were provided with a scenario and asked to provide alternative approaches that could solve the problem based on their personal experience at their colleges. By the end of the group discussion, participants presented a draft of the deliverable as per the topic under discussion. More so, group discussions were an excellent approach to test participant’s teamwork skills and ability to compromise, as well as respecting team decisions. It was an opportunity to see how librarians will work with the library committees. Group discussions further initiated and cemented the much-needed librarian–academic staff – college management relationship. During the group discussion, librarians, teaching staff, ICT staff and college management staff, specifically the Principals and Deputy Principals interacted freely thus starting and cultivating a new era of work relationship between them. Individual presentation: prior to the workshop, participants were sent instructions to prepare a presentation on a topic. For example, participants were asked to provide their views of what a “user-friendly library” would look like or what would constitute a “user-friendly library”; the college library of HTC-Mulago was asked to talk about their experience working with book reserves, challenges faced and plans they have to address the challenges, while the college librarian from NTC-Kaliro was asked to describe a situation where they were able to assist a patron, the limitations they faced and how they addressed them. Doing so did not only assist to emotionally prepare the participants for the training but also helped to make them start thinking about the training in relation to their libraries and work. Take-home assignment: at the end of each session, participants were given home assignments to not only revise the training material but also prepare for the next day training. Further the take-home assignments provided time for the participants to discuss with their colleagues outside of the training room so as to have a common ground/ understanding on some of the very sensitive issues. Most interesting assignment was when participants were asked to review an article and to make a presentation in relation to their library experiences. Participant reports: participant reports resulted from the take-home assignments and participants were asked to make submission on a given topic. For example, participants were asked to review IFLA section on library management and write a two-page report on how such information provided supported their own work, as well as a participant report came from their own observation after a library visit. Invited talks with library expert: two invited talks by library experts from Consortium of Uganda University Libraries and Uganda Library and Information Science Association with the goal to share their experience, motivate the participants to strive higher and achieve great things for their libraries. Library visitation: there were two library visits conducted on three separate days – International Hospital Kampala (IHK) Library, Makerere University Library and Aga Khan University Hospital Library. Each of these library visits provided unique opportunities for the participants to explore best practices and implement similar practices in their libraries. Visual aids – videos, building plans and still photos: these were visual learning aids to supplement text during the lectures because they carried lot of information while initiating different thoughts best on the participants’ past experience and expertise. The training advocated for the use of ATL methodologies and likewise similar methodologies were used to encourage participants do so in their classrooms. Findings Addressing Key Concerns: Several measures, both long and short term, were taken to address the gaps limiting the performance of the librarians. The measures taken included: selected representative sample of participants including all college stakeholders as discussed above; active teaching and learning methodologies applied in the training and blended in the content of the training materials; initiated and formulated approaches to collaborations, networks and partnerships; visited different libraries to benchmark library practices and encourage future job shadowing opportunities; and encouraged participants to relate freely, understand and value each other’s work to change their mindsets. College librarians were encouraged to ensure library priorities remain on the agenda through advocacy campaigns. Short-term measures: The UFL training was designed as a practical and hands-on training blended with individual and group tasks, discussions, take-home assignments and presentations by participants. This allowed participates to engage with the material and take responsibility for their own work. Further, the training material was prepared with a view that librarians support the academic life of teaching staff and students. Participants were tasked to develop and later fine-tune materials designed to support their work. For example, developing a subject bibliography and posting it on the library website designed using open source tools such as Google website, Wikis, blogs. The developed library manual includes user-friendly policies and procedures referred to as “dos and don’ts in the library” that promote equitable open access to information; drafting book selection memos; new book arrivals lists; subscribing to open access journals; current awareness services and selective dissemination of information service displays and electronic bulletins. Based on their library needs and semester calendar, participants developed action points and timelines to implement tasks in their libraries at the end of each unit training. Librarians were encouraged to share their experiences through library websites, Facebook page, group e-mail/listserv and Instagram; however, they were challenged with intimate internet access. College libraries were rewarded for their extraordinary job. Given their pivotal role in the management and administration of financial and material resources, on top of librarians, the participants in this training were college administrators/ management, teaching and ICT staff, researchers and student leadership. Participants were selected to address the current and future needs of the college library. These are individuals that are perceived to have a great impact towards furthering the college library agenda. The practical nature of this training warranted conducting the workshops from developed but similar library spaces, for example, Aga Khan University Library and Kampala Capital City, Makerere University Library, International Hospital Kampala Library and Uganda Christian University Library. Participants observed orientation sessions, reference desk management and interviews, collection management practices, preservation and conservation, secretarial bureau management, etc. Long-term measures: Changing the mindset of librarians, college administrators and teaching staff is a long-term commitment which continues to demand for innovative interventions. For example: job shadowing allowed college librarian short-term attachments to Makerere University Library, Uganda Christian University Library, Aga Khan Hospital University Library and International Hospital Kampala Library – these libraries were selected because of their comparable practices and size. The mentorship programme lasted between two-three weeks; on-spot supervision and follow-up visits to assess progress with the action plan by the librarians and college administration and college library committee; ensuring that all library documents – library strategic plan, library manual, library organogram, etc are approved by the College Governing Council and are part of the college wide governing documents; and establishing the library committee with a job description for each member – this has strengthened the library most especially as an advocacy tool, planning and budgeting mechanism, awareness channel for library practices, while bringing the library to the agenda – reemphasizing the library’s agenda. To bridge the widened gap between librarians and the rest of the stakeholders, i.e. teaching staff, ICT staff, college administration and students, a college library committee structure and its mandate were established comprising: Library Committee Chairperson – member of the teaching staff; Library Committee Secretary – College Librarian; Student Representative – must be a member of the student Guild with library work experience; and Representative from each college academic department. A library consortium was formed involving all the four project supported colleges to participate in resource sharing practices, shared work practices like shared cataloguing, information literacy training, reference interview and referral services as well a platform for sharing experiences. A library consortium further demanded for automating library functions to facilitate collaboration and shared work. Plans are in place to install Koha integrated library system that will cultivate a strong working relationship between librarians and students, academic staff, college administration and IT managers. This was achieved by ensuring that librarians innovatively implement library practices and skills acquired from the workshop as well as show their relevance to the academic life of the academic staff. Cultivating relationships takes a great deal of time, thus college librarians were coached on: creating inclusive library committees, timely response to user needs, design library programmes that address user needs, keeping with changing technology to suite changing user needs, seeking customer feedback and collecting user statistics to support their requests, strengthening the library’s financial based by starting a secretarial bureau and conducting user surveys to understand users’ information-seeking behaviour. To improve the awareness of new developments in the library world, college librarians were introduced to library networks at national, regional and international levels, as a result they participated in conferences, workshops, seminars at local, regional and international level. For example, for the first time and with funding from Belgium Technical Cooperation, college librarians attended 81st IFLA World Library and Information Congress in South African in 2015. College libraries are now members of the Consortium of Uganda University Libraries and Uganda Library and Information Science Association and have attended meetings of these two very important library organisations in Uganda’s LIS profession. The college librarians have attended meetings and workshops organized by these two organisations. Originality/value At the end of the three units training, participants were able to develop: a strategic plan for their libraries; an organogram with staffing needs and job description matching staff functions; a Library Committee for each library and with a structure unifying all the four project-support Colleges; a library action plan with due dates including deliverables and responsibilities for implementation; workflow plan and organisation of key sections of the library such as reserved and public spaces; furniture and equipment inventory (assets); a library manual and collection development policy; partnerships with KCCA Library and Consortium of Uganda University Libraries; skills to use Koha ILMS for performing library functions including: cataloguing, circulation, acquisitions, serials management, reporting and statistics; skills in searching library databases and information literacy skills; skills in designing simple and intuitive websites using Google Sites tools; and improved working relationship between the stakeholders was visible. To further the user-friendly libraries principle of putting users in the centre of the library’s operations, support ATL methodologies and activities with emphasis on getting engaged in transforming spaces, services, outreach to users and collections the following initiatives are currently implemented in the colleges: getting approval of all library policy documents by College Governing Council, initiating job shadowing opportunities, conducting on-spot supervision, guide libraries to set up college library committees and their job description, design library websites, develop dissemination sessions for all library policies, incorporate user-friendly language in all library documents, initiate income generation activities for libraries, set terms of reference for library staff and staffing as per college organogram, procurement of library tools like DDC and library of congress subject headings (LCSH), encourage attendance to webinars and space planning for the new libraries.

Lecturers' well-being is essential for successful education at any university. The paper seeks to explore the untold stories of emotional challenges faced by some lecturers in a rural institution of higher learning in Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. Today's universities are faced with myriad challenges, among them is lecturers' well-being. Lecturers‘ anxiety is now rampant but not enough attention is given to it since people assume that academics can cope with life's stresses. Exploring the problem and consequences on lecturers' work will provide strategies that could be implemented by the university management. The existential anxiety theory, qualitative-case study design and a purposeful sampling technique were used for the study. Interviews were utilised to collect data. Data presentation and analysis were done using verbatim quotations. The study established that university lecturers were overwhelmed by challenges such as job uncertainty, pressure to engage in research, supervision, frequent student unrest, dwindling resources, pressure to integrate information communication and technology in teaching and learning, and so forth. The study concluded that lecturers were facing a myriad of challenges that had a negative impact on the execution of their duties. The paper recommends that the university management should develop a model to address the lecturers' identified challenges.

Background Zambia is still experiencing a severe shortage of health workers, which is impacting the national health care system. Very few people are trained, educational infrastructure is inadequate, and senior human resources for training are not yet sufficient to produce the number of health care workers needed, especially for currently underserved rural areas. Therefore, to strengthen the medical education program of medical licentiates, we implemented a tablet-based electronic learning platform (e-platform) with a medical decision-support component. Objective As the primary objective, this study aimed to explore the acceptance and information system (IS) success of an e-platform focused on offline-based tablet usage for nonphysician clinical students in a low-resource context in Zambia, Africa. Furthermore, we aimed to evaluate student demographic factors and prior technological experience, as well as medical lecturers’ acceptance of technology of the e-platform. Methods We collected data for the study before and after the intervention. Before the intervention, we collected student demographic data and prior technological experience using a questionnaire. After the intervention, we collected results of the questionnaire on technology acceptance of students and IS success of the e-platform, as well as technology acceptance of medical lecturers. We calculated statistical measures such as means, standard deviations, and correlations of investigated variables. The study report was compiled using the Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials-Electronic Health checklist. Results Overall, questionnaire results of students and medical lecturers indicated acceptance of the e-platform and showed higher ratings for overall net benefits and information quality (students) and perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness (medical lecturers) as compared with ratings of other categories. The lowest scores were conveyed for system use and service quality (students) and attitude and behavioral intention (medical lecturers). Conclusions Acceptance of the e-platform as a learning technology for strengthening medical education in a low-resource context in Zambia was generally high for students and medical lecturers, but shortcomings were also identified. Results indicated low overall usage of the e-platform as a learning and teaching tool. One hindering factor was the tablets’ overall weak reliability with regard to its service life and battery life span, and another was the teachers’ low engagement with the e-platform. Next steps may include other hardware and more technology-based training for medical lecturers. The evaluation results indicated that the e-platform may open new promise for further strengthening and expanding medical education in this context, especially with more affordable and viable technologies that are available.

Abstract Objective – To investigate and compare the nature of e-mail reference services in academic and public libraries outside the United States. Design – Longitudinal comparative study. Setting – A total of 23 academic and public libraries in ten countries: Australia, Belgium, France, Germany, Mexico, the Netherlands, Slovenia, South Africa, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. Subjects – The authors collected reference questions that were e-mailed to the 23 libraries for the weeks of April 3, 2006 and April 7, 2008. Questions were sent from the libraries’ websites to QuestionPoint, a collaborative, online reference service that was used to answer the questions received. Methods – The authors randomly selected 25 questions for each library for the weeks under investigation. If a library did not receive 25 email reference questions that week, then they collected transactions from subsequent weeks until the quota was met or until the end of the month. The authors examined transactions from a total of 919 questions – 515 questions in 2006 and 476 in 2008. All identifying information about the user was stripped from each transaction collected. Each transaction was labeled according to the following categories: • Type of institution, i.e., whether the question was sent to an academic or public library • Language of the question • Question type, i.e., whether the question was about library policy or access to electronic resources (labeled “access” questions), about library holdings (labeled “bibliographic” questions), or about finding specific information on a topic (labeled “subject” questions) • Answer type, i.e., whether the response consisted of: a confirmation, clarification, fact, instructions, referral to a pathfinder/bibliography, referral to another library/person/place, or no answer. • User status, i.e., whether the person asking the question was an undergrad, a graduate student, or a staff/faculty member • Subject classification of the questions using the Dewey Decimal Classification system • Response time Main Results – The e-mail transactions that were examined revealed a wide range of end-user and librarian behaviors. English, followed by Dutch, German, and French, were the languages most frequently used by library users. Countries also varied in terms of the types of questions received. For example, more than 75% of the email queries in Belgium (which only had academic libraries participate in this study) were “access” questions, while Mexico (which also consisted of all academic libraries) only received 6% “access” questions, France (all public libraries) had relatively few access questions, and Sweden (also all public libraries) had none. Public libraries received the most “subject” questions (75%) compared to academic libraries (28%). Public libraries answered “subject” questions with facts over a third of the time, while academic libraries responded with instructions close to half of the time. Among the academic libraries, graduate students asked slightly more “access” questions than undergraduates (62% versus 56%), and undergraduates asked more “subject” questions than graduate students (26% versus 13%). The “subject” questions submitted to academic libraries were divided almost equally among topics in the humanities (36%), the sciences (32%), and the social sciences (32%). This differed from public libraries; the latter received mostly questions about humanities topics (65%). The time taken to respond to users’ reference questions ranged from a few minutes to a few weeks between libraries. Some libraries set the response times on their websites. Those libraries that indicated longer response times on their sites met the users’ expectations more often, up to a maximum of 100 percent of the time. Most of the characteristics of email reference services that are listed above remained consistent from 2006 to 2008. The two areas that changed over two years were the libraries’ response time and the types of questions asked by university students. “Access questions increased (by 14 percent among graduates and by 4 percent among undergraduates), and bibliographic and subject questions decreased in both groups” (p. 364). Response time improved overall from 2006 to 2008. Conclusion – The authors’ analysis of the 919 transactions of e-mail reference questions revealed unique patterns about end-user information seeking behavior and librarians’ responses in academic and public libraries outside the United States and Canada. One of these patterns is that the public libraries participating in the study received the highest percentage of “subject” questions. The authors state that “the pattern of a much higher percentage of subject-related questions in public libraries contrasts with the general virtual reference trend in academic libraries, which shows a much higher percentage of access questions. Since many of the access questions concerned connection problems or logging on to databases, the relatively fewer number may indicate that the arts and humanities disciplines require less database searching and that the users need specific answers instead” (p. 367). The data also revealed significant differences between the types of questions asked by undergraduates versus graduate students. Undergraduates asked two thirds of the subject questions submitted to academic libraries and graduate students asked just over a fourth. The authors assume that this finding indicates that graduate students do more of their own research than undergraduates. The authors were concerned by the increase in the number of access questions posed by undergrads and graduate students from 2006 to 2008. They suggested that websites, databases, and other resources might have become more difficult to use over the years. They also noted that questions in technology almost doubled from 2006 to 2008. One of the patterns that were revealed contradicted the authors’ assumption that libraries with slow response times in 2006 would improve in 2008 as they became more proficient in providing virtual reference services. The majority of libraries in the study improved their turnaround time from 2006 to 2008, but the two slowest libraries took even longer to respond to their users.

AbstractInformation Literacy (IL) is fundamental for lifelong learning, especially for the teaching profession, where information is critical for imparting knowledge to students who are expected to be creative, critical thinkers and lifelong learners. The study investigates the search strategy, self-concept and metacognitive skills of secondary school teachers in selected cities in Nigeria and South Africa. The study adopted a post-positivist research paradigm combining both qualitative and quantitative research methodologies largely through a multi- case study research design. Data were gathered through questionnaires, interviews, observation and document analysis that included a literature review. The target population was secondary school teachers in Lagos and Durban. The sample for the research was drawn from teachers in government secondary schools in Lagos and Durban. A multi-stage sampling technique was used in the first stage to purposively select samples from the two cities of Lagos and Durban in order to make comparisons. The second stage involved stratified random sampling, and the third stage applied simple random sampling. Literature analysis and the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) were used to inform the study. The study revealed the following: (i) teachers in Durban had a higher level of perception of the need for information literacy than their counterparts in Lagos; (ii) electronic information resources were infrequently used by the teachers; (iii) younger teachers tended to possess a higher level of information literacy than their older colleagues, which proves why in-service training is imperative; (iv) female teachers were significantly more information literate than their male counterparts; (v) many of the school libraries seem to have been afterthoughts, and the specifications for library building and planning were not observed as itemized by IFLA library building guidelines; and (vi) interaction and collaboration between teachers and librarians was limited. Recommendations have been made regarding how the issues and challenges could be addressed and solved with IL policy and work shopping of teachers for IL.

Information literacy (IL) is a precondition for lifelong learning, especially for teachers whose profession authorises them to impart knowledge to students who are expected to be resourceful and critical thinkers. The study investigated the perceptions of secondary school teachers of IL skills, in the two cities of Lagos, Nigeria, and Durban, South Africa, focusing on six research questions. The post-positivist research paradigm was adopted for this study, which combines both qualitative and quantitative research methodologies through a multicase study research design. Data were gathered through questionnaires, interviews, observation and document analysis that included a literature review. The target population was secondary school teachers in Lagos and Durban. The study revealed the following: 1)Â teachers in Durban had a higher level of perception of the need for IL than their counterparts in Lagos, 2)Â electronic information resources were infrequently used by the teachers, 3)Â younger teachers tend to possess a higher level of IL than their older colleagues, which makes in-service training imperative, 4)Â female teachers are significantly more information literate than their male counterparts, 5)Â many of the school libraries seem to have been afterthoughts, and the specifications for library building and planning were not observed as itemised by IFLA library building guidelines, and 6)Â interaction and collaboration between teachers and librarians are limited. The study recommended a comprehensive policy review to deal with IL challenges, with appropriate training and workshops for teachers topping the list.

NOTE: THIS ARTICLE WAS PUBLISHED WITH THE INFORMING SCIENCE INSTITUTE. Aim/Purpose....................................................................................................................................................................................................... The main aim of this study was to investigate the status of records management program at Walter Sisulu University (WSU) using the Nelson Mandela Drive Site of Mthatha Campus as a case study. Background......................................................................................................................................................................................................... For an organization to function effectively, records (both in electronic and paper format) need to be captured, recorded and secured in order to ensure their authenticity, integrity, reliability and accessibility. The core functions of a university are learning, teaching, research and community engagement, and in order to carry out these functions records are created and received. Records therefore, constitute an essential instrument of administration of any institutions without which operational processes and functions cannot be executed (Kendall and Mizra, 2006). Thus, a proper and efficient managing of records is critical to functioning and administration of institutions. Council of Higher Education (2000) pointed out that record-keeping in the higher education institutions in South Africa was inadequate. Effective records management in universities in the Eastern Cape has not been adequately documented. Hence, this study investigates the records management program that exist in WSU. Although legislation regulating the management of records in South Africa exist, they might be ignorance on the part of certain officials entrusted with managing WSU records and that could have adverse effect on the performance of WSU and ultimately on service delivery. Methodology....................................................................................................................................................................................................... This study may have influence in policy formulation and compliance with the judicial directives on records management program of universities. It may also help improve service delivery, by enabling orderly, accountable and efficient management of universities records. Contribution........................................................................................................................................................................................................ This study may have influence in policy formulation and compliance with the judicial directives on records management program of universities. It may also help improve service delivery, by enabling orderly, accountable and efficient management of universities records. Findings .............................................................................................................................................................................................................. The major findings of the study revealed WSU fell below the requirements in terms of records management program on maintaining records that document its business activities. Inadequate infrastructure, inadequacy regarding the desirable control of WSU records at each stage as required by the records life cycle framework was also found to be inadequate and limited knowledge of legal requirements regarding records management. Recommendations for Practitioners................................................................................................................................................................. Based on the findings, the following recommendations were made. Effort should be made to implement a Centralized control of Decentralized Registry System (Integrated Registry System), provision of training of staff, as well as proper infrastructural facilities to manage WSU records that document its business activities. Recommendation for Researchers................................................................................................................................................................... There is a need for further studies of this kind in other Universities, Technical and Vocational Education (TVET) Colleges in the Eastern Cape Province in order to establish their practices in managing records that document their business activities. Impact on Society.............................................................................................................................................................................................. The research will assist to highlight to administrators, policy makers of universities that proper records management could help universities to manage their information efficiently, fulfill their mandate, protect them from litigation, preserve their corporate memory, and foster accountability and good governance. Future Research.................................................................................................................................................................................................. A study to check the readiness of institution of higher learning to manage electronic records that documents their business activities in the 21st Century digital era will be vital in this context.

Area Studies and Study Abroad in the 21st Century The future now belongs to societies that organize themselves for learning. - Ray Marshall and Marc Tucker, Thinking for a Living, xiii Few today would argue with the conviction that nearly every phase of our daily lives is shaped and informed by global societies, corporations, events and ideas. More than ever before, it is possible to claim that we are increasingly aware of the dynamic power and penetrating effects of global flows on information, technology, the sciences, the arts, the humanities, and languages. Borderless, spaceless and timeless, such sources of knowledge, it appears, are effortlessly digested and disseminated without clocks, calendars, or physical limitations. It is, of course, a mistake to believe that packages of “instant” knowledge that appear to wing their way at megahertz speeds in and through our earthly lives account for all or nearly all that there is to know—or, more importantly, to learn—about our communities, regions and the globe itself. On the contrary: the “knowing” about how to live, to work, to prosper, or to understand ourselves and those around us is not what educators mean when they speak of intellectual achievement and practical understanding. It is the “learning” about us, our societies and our global knowledge that lies at the heart of the international educator’s life work, and it is the learning that is the most controversial aspect of education. The act of “learning,” in fact, is less objective and more subjective, is less passive and more active, and is less superficial and more profound in each of our lives. By definition, a responsible learner is one who takes on the intellectual challenge and the social and personal obligation to leave this globe a better place for those who follow, who assumes the life work of influencing the lives of others, and who is committed to making the best of every opportunity both within the reach and beyond the vision of the mind’s eye. Study abroad has traditionally been viewed as a time of seeing and viewing, however passively, the differences and similarities of other peoples, societies and cultures. The period of knowing about what others do or say can occur at any time during one’s life; however, the “knowing” of studying abroad is accomplished in the college years prior to the accumulated knowledge about practical learning and living. In this respect, study abroad has been seen as an experience which may or may not invest the students in greater or lesser insights about the peoples, societies or cultures around them. Further, when study abroad is bound up with travel or movement from place to place, it can become a passive act, so much so that travel rather than learning becomes the goal of the study abroad experience. Simply put, the more that one travels, the more, it is argued, one learns. Furthermore, while seen as desirable for “classroom learning,” some would say that no amount of academic preparation appears to be useful in the enterprise of the travel experience, since so many experiences are unpredictable, individualized and, in some cases, arbitrary. From the perspective of study abroad, it might be said that the gods of area studies no longer completely fulfill our students’ needs, while the gods of global studies have not yet fulfilled their promises. Janus-like, international educators look in one direction at a still highly intense and valued picture of local cultures and identities, and in another direction toward an increasingly common culture, economy and society. The former appears to celebrate the differences and “uncommonness” of the human experience while the latter smoothes over the differences to underscore the commonalities and sameness of our contemporary world. The choice appears to be between the particular and the universal, the local and the global. Academic preparations, such as area studies programs, appear to be unnecessary for the individualized forms of learning, such as study abroad. Indeed, since an area studies preparation may raise or strengthen stereotypical perceptions of the overseas peoples, societies and cultures, it has been argued that it best be left aside. In this context, students are viewed as a tabula rasa on which new discoveries from living and studying overseas leave an imprint or impression. It seems that sending as many students as possible in as many directions as possible has become the dominant study abroad objective. Thus, “whole world” presentations and documentation often rely on the “other” as the learning objective with little or no attempt to discriminate or distinguish the levels of learning that such “whole world” immersion entails. In recent times, additional concerns about liability, health, safety and comfort levels have been added to the “pre-departure” orientations and training programs. The “student as self-learner” continues to be viewed and treated as a “customer knowledge-consumer” within both U.S. private and public colleges and universities. In the age of “globalization,” it is the conviction of the editors of Frontiers that knowledge consumption is only a small aspect of the 21st century international educators’ arsenal. More importantly, it will be argued in this special issue on area studies and Study Abroad that the intellectual development of the U.S. undergraduate needs to be enhanced with skills of self-learning and transdisciplinary perspectives on local and regional cultures and languages. The authors contributing to this special thematic issue of Frontiers have been asked to bring their state-of-the-art thinking on area studies to bear on the key question confronting study abroad: How does specialized understanding of geographical and cultural areas of the world enhance and strengthen undergraduate learning on and beyond our campuses? In other words, in what ways do area studies inform overseas learning through the activity of study abroad? The variety of responses demonstrates two principal ways in which area studies has begun to reformulate its goals and strategies. First, area studies reaffirms a commitment to local and regional comprehensive research and teaching, and redefines its mission in terms of the need to come to grips with local knowledge and specific social and cultural practices within a globalized world. Second, area studies specialists question long-held definitions of concepts, including those of “geographical area” and “globalization,” in order to maximize contributions to U.S. undergraduate learning. David Ludden begins our issue with a review of the Social Science Research Council and the Ford Foundation’s understanding of the transition in area studies from the Sputnik era to the globalization era. Ludden notes the faculty dilemma in working in an “area.” He points out the political interests of the Cold War for public funding of such specialized academic skills, skills which, whether funded by the government or not, were and continue to be defined by the scholar first and then by finances. Drawing on his own experience at the South Asia Institute at the University of Pennsylvania, Ludden takes the reader through the intellectual rationale for area studies, and how that rationale is being redefined in favor of stronger area studies in the present globalization era. Gregory Kulacki’s study of China and the Chinese experience points accurately to one approach to defining area studies; that is, in terms of the peoples and cultures studied. In a sense, Kulacki makes it clear that Chinese studies is “legitimate” and has authority as long as it reflects the Chinese themselves, their experiences and lives. Ann Curthoys, on the other hand, notes the growing importance of defining Australians and Australian studies not only in terms of the changing experiences of contemporary Australia, but also in terms of the demands of non-Australians, who ask for more precision in defining Australians, their history, society and cultures. Richard Beach and George Sherman take on a more difficult matter, at least from the viewpoint of U.S. faculty and students. Canada is rarely seen as a study abroad site for U.S. students, not only because of its geographical position but also for its cultural and historical proximity. The overall U.S. view, albeit unflattering, is that Canada and Canadians are very much like the U.S. and Americans, so why study in Canada? Beach and Sherman argue that history, languages, and borders do make a difference, both physically as well as culturally. Using the argument of the previous area studies specialists, they are interested in the ways that Canadians have shaped and informed their cultural and social identities in the teeth of U.S. economic and political domination in the region. The implications of globalization are, perhaps, more immediately evident in the Canadian case than in any other world region. U.S. students would do well to observe the processes of adaptation and acculturation first-hand by studying and living in Canada. James Petras gives us a broader vista of regional adaptation to the economic and political forces of globalization with his essay on Latin America. Indeed, Latin America has a dynamic similar to that of Canada due to its physical, cultural and historical proximity to the U.S. It would be a mistake to see Latin America only in terms of the north-south regional dynamics, since Europe, Asia and Africa have also shaped both past and present structures and institutions within that region in ways far more dramatic than has the United States. Study abroad, Petras reminds us, is an excellent way of learning directly about Latin American societies, cultures and politics from Latin Americans themselves, a learning that may be widely different from the official U.S. diplomatic and corporate perspectives. Finally, the very familiar world regions, such as England, offer in some cases more challenges to the U.S. undergraduate than might be expected. Jane Edwards looks at Britain and all that U.S. students may or may not know about that culture and society. The study of Britain lends itself, Edwards argues, to more than the usual challenges, due to the preconceived notions that U.S. students bring with them to, say, London. Understanding the “European-ness” of Britain and its historic relationship with continental Western Europe will justify the need to see Britain as less familiar and more complex, thus necessitating the need to study, visit and live in parts of Britain and Western Europe. In this case, the area does define the country, its identity and culture in a historical interplay of social, cultural and economic forces. David Lloyd, Philip Khoury and Russell Bova invite the reader to return to large regional perspectives through African, Middle Eastern and Russian area studies. David Lloyd presents an analysis of the broad and immediate contexts of African studies. While recognizing the difficulty of establishing consistently causal links between African studies and study abroad in Africa, he delineates the significance of local, experience-based study for the development of collaborative African studies research. Lloyd argues that the benefits of study abroad in Africa to African studies belie the relatively small number of students involved. Further, assessment for funding and other purposes needs to utilize criteria that take into account the challenges of on-site study in Africa and the depth of post-study abroad participation not just in African studies per se, but in other related areas as well. Considering the recent past of Middle East studies, Philip Khoury charts its response to post-Cold War criticism. He illustrates new directions the field is taking towards including different geographic areas, and new emphasis in organizational priorities, noting the importance of funding for providing first-hand contact for students in Middle Eastern studies with scholars from the Middle East. Khoury assesses the impact of recent historical and political events in the area on Middle Eastern studies, and looks toward more inclusive research efforts. Russell Bova examines another region that has undergone considerable political, social and economic change in the 20th century. Having moved from empire to soviet socialist states and now to a confederation of nation states, Russia and, naturally, Russian area studies, offer an excellent example of local and regional complexities both in the nomenclature of the region and in the changes in Russian studies programs. Bova illustrates the need to understand the specific dynamics of local communities in their relationship to larger administrative units such as provinces, states and national capitals. In referring to the “double transition” of contemporary Russia, Bova reminds us that globalization is both a grass roots and elite process with many unlikely “bedfellows” that is also changing more rapidly each decade than had been the case fifty years ago. Finally, Richard Falk and Nancy Kanach collaborate to discuss the ways in which globalization and study abroad are emerging in the post-Cold War period. The sudden shifts of economic and political power make our world more fragile and more difficult to comprehend without considering the “computer gap” that is rapidly leaving whole communities and even nations in a more uneven relationship with the power brokers than ever before. The need to reflect with care and precision through area studies is complemented by the additional pressing need to study, see and learn outside of the U.S. Globalization means promoting study abroad and reaffirming the strengths of local and regional studies. Taken together, these essays invite international educators to reconsider notions of learning before, during and after study abroad. The writers view study abroad as an opportunity for social and intellectual engagement with other peoples and with oneself. The essays point to a variety of ways of intellectually preparing our students for their initial encounters with sets of real-life global experiences. Reflecting on such engagement and encounters allows students to begin to formulate, with increasing sophistication, specific and general concepts about individual differences, local and regional commonalities, and the global transformations of our present era. In light of the current area studies debates, we might also reconsider approaches to pre-departure preparations, create onsite projects, and reorganize the overseas curricula of study abroad programs themselves. In particular, students can continue to benefit from area and global studies programs back on the home campus upon their return, where they can enter effectively into scholarly debates and continue the learning and personal growth that began while they were abroad. Frontiers welcomes comments and suggestions for future special issues. We see ourselves and our field of international education in greater need of close cooperation with our faculty colleagues both in terms of defining the work of international learning, and in terms of formulating and designing international or global programs. We thus invite our readers to see Frontiers as a forum for such academic exchanges, and promise that Frontiers will respond to articles, essays, book reviews and reviews of resources for study abroad with collegial interest and enthusiasm. We wish to thank especially Brian Whalen, Rhoda Borcherding and our other colleagues on the Editorial Board for their support, encouragement and assistance in completing this special issue. We are particularly pleased with the authors and their willingness to listen to our requests and comments. Thomas Ricks, Villanova University Katharine Krebs, SUNY Binghamton Michael Monahan, Macalester College Suggestions for Further Reading Altbach, Philip G. and Patti McGill Peterson, eds. Higher Education in the 21st Century: Global Challenge and National Response. IIE Research Report Number 29. Annapolis, MD: IIE Books, 1999. This slim volume focuses on principal topics for colleges and universities to consider both locally and globally. Philip Altbach and Todd Davis set the tone of the volume with their “notes for an international dialogue on higher education.” Stressing the need for practical education, the authors also raise issues about the role of technology, the increase in “internationally mobile students,” the global role of graduate education, privatization of higher education, committed faculty and the threats of “managerialized” universities. The eight responses to the opening themes address specific issues for China, India, Africa and South Africa, Latin America, Japan and Europe. The work is a very good discussion text for international educators and their area studies faculty colleagues, and also provides a theoretical basis for the design and development of overseas programs. Stephen R. Graubard, ed. “Education Yesterday, Education Tomorrow.” Daedalus. Vol. 127, No. 4 (Fall, 1998). The eleven authors of this issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences build off the Fall 1995 issue of Daedalus and its topic of “American Education: Still Separate, Still Unequal.” While neither accepting nor rejecting the thrust of A Nation at Risk, the authors look both at what has occurred over the past three decades, and at what is on the horizon for the next decade. In stressing reforms of systems and innovative ways of learning, the authors’ discussions invite the international educator to address a variety of ways in which students learn and to challenge the system in which they thrive. WWW. NAFSA.ORG/SECUSSA.WHYSTUDY In 1989, NAFSA and COUNCIL created the Whole World Committee (WWC). Initially chaired by John Sommers and now chaired by Mick Vandenberg, the WWC set out to find ways by which U.S. students could and would choose non-European overseas sites for a semester of study and learning. One of the tasks that the WWC accomplished was the creation of four area study essays on Africa, Asia, South America and the Middle East. Each essay, entitled “Why Study in …,” addresses basic fears and stereotyping of the non-European world regions. The essays then focus on benefits, health and safety, “getting started,” housing, and practical learning in each of these regions. In newly-attached longer versions, the essays also have a bibliography and more informative texts. The shorter versions were published serially in Transitions Abroad. NAFSA has added two additional important essays to this website, on “Class and Study Abroad” and “An African-American in South Africa.” Overall, the readers of Frontiers will be well-advised to access the articles at the website and consider using all the essays in their pre-departure orientation training, faculty area studies discussion groups, and in welcome-back sessions for returning students. Richard Falk. Predatory Globalization: A Critique. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1999. The thesis of Richard Falk’s critique is that “predatory globalization’ has eroded, if not altogether broken, the former social contract that was forged between state and society during the last century or so” (p. 3). The breaking of that contract resulted from the state’s “deference to the discipline of global capital” and the neglect of the common good. Falk argues that only the “massing of strong transnational social pressures on the states of the world could alter the political equation to the point where the state could sufficiently recover its autonomy in relation to the world economy.” He demonstrates the emergence of a new kind of transnational politics referred to as “globalization-from-below.” In restoring “global civil society,” this new politics will need to move forward with the project of cosmopolitan democracy, including the protection of human rights. For the international educator, creating overseas programs that allow for a better understanding of the interconnectedness of regional and global levels is an admirable goal. More important, however, are those programs that offer U.S. undergraduates insights into “world order priorities” such as global poverty, protection of the planet, the sources of transnational violence, and “responsible sovereignty” in ways rarely found in traditional classroom learning on our campuses. Mark Tessler, Jodi Nachtwey and Anne Banda. Eds. Area Studies and Social Science: Strategies for Understanding Middle East Politics. Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 1999. This edited work addresses a wide range of issues involved in the “rational choice” versus area studies debate that is so well elucidated by David Ludden in the opening article of our special issue. Looking at the “area studies controversy” from the perspective of political scientists, the editors’ Introduction underscores questions that we international educators need to address ourselves. It is valuable to wonder about the “uses and abuses” of area studies in planning our overseas programs, or discussing the “internationalization” of our curricula. It is also critical to understand the Eurocentric and overly-simplistic approaches of the social science “rational choice” models. While agreeing that both area studies and the social science theories and methodologies are necessary for a global understanding, the present work places such questions within the context of the Middle East as a stimulus and a model for increasing the value of research about any country or region.

When George Orwell encountered ideas of a technological utopia sixty-five years ago, he acted the grumpy middle-aged man Reading recently a batch of rather shallowly optimistic “progressive” books, I was struck by the automatic way in which people go on repeating certain phrases which were fashionable before 1914. Two great favourites are “the abolition of distance” and “the disappearance of frontiers”. I do not know how often I have met with the statements that “the aeroplane and the radio have abolished distance” and “all parts of the world are now interdependent” (1944). It is worth revisiting the old boy’s grumpiness, because the rhetoric he so niftily skewers continues in our own time. Facebook features “Peace on Facebook” and even claims that it can “decrease world conflict” through inter-cultural communication. Twitter has announced itself as “a triumph of humanity” (“A Cyber-House” 61). Queue George. In between Orwell and latter-day hoody cybertarians, a whole host of excitable public intellectuals announced the impending end of materiality through emergent media forms. Marshall McLuhan, Neil Postman, Daniel Bell, Ithiel de Sola Pool, George Gilder, Alvin Toffler—the list of 1960s futurists goes on and on. And this wasn’t just a matter of punditry: the OECD decreed the coming of the “information society” in 1975 and the European Union (EU) followed suit in 1979, while IBM merrily declared an “information age” in 1977. Bell theorized this technological utopia as post-ideological, because class would cease to matter (Mattelart). Polluting industries seemingly no longer represented the dynamic core of industrial capitalism; instead, market dynamism radiated from a networked, intellectual core of creative and informational activities. The new information and knowledge-based economies would rescue First World hegemony from an “insurgent world” that lurked within as well as beyond itself (Schiller). Orwell’s others and the Cold-War futurists propagated one of the most destructive myths shaping both public debate and scholarly studies of the media, culture, and communication. They convinced generations of analysts, activists, and arrivistes that the promises and problems of the media could be understood via metaphors of the environment, and that the media were weightless and virtual. The famous medium they wished us to see as the message —a substance as vital to our wellbeing as air, water, and soil—turned out to be no such thing. Today’s cybertarians inherit their anti-Marxist, anti-materialist positions, as a casual glance at any new media journal, culture-industry magazine, or bourgeois press outlet discloses. The media are undoubtedly important instruments of social cohesion and fragmentation, political power and dissent, democracy and demagoguery, and other fraught extensions of human consciousness. But talk of media systems as equivalent to physical ecosystems—fashionable among marketers and media scholars alike—is predicated on the notion that they are environmentally benign technologies. This has never been true, from the beginnings of print to today’s cloud-covered computing. Our new book Greening the Media focuses on the environmental impact of the media—the myriad ways that media technology consumes, despoils, and wastes natural resources. We introduce ideas, stories, and facts that have been marginal or absent from popular, academic, and professional histories of media technology. Throughout, ecological issues have been at the core of our work and we immodestly think the same should apply to media communications, and cultural studies more generally. We recognize that those fields have contributed valuable research and teaching that address environmental questions. For instance, there is an abundant literature on representations of the environment in cinema, how to communicate environmental messages successfully, and press coverage of climate change. That’s not enough. You may already know that media technologies contain toxic substances. You may have signed an on-line petition protesting the hazardous and oppressive conditions under which workers assemble cell phones and computers. But you may be startled, as we were, by the scale and pervasiveness of these environmental risks. They are present in and around every site where electronic and electric devices are manufactured, used, and thrown away, poisoning humans, animals, vegetation, soil, air and water. We are using the term “media” as a portmanteau word to cover a multitude of cultural and communications machines and processes—print, film, radio, television, information and communications technologies (ICT), and consumer electronics (CE). This is not only for analytical convenience, but because there is increasing overlap between the sectors. CE connect to ICT and vice versa; televisions resemble computers; books are read on telephones; newspapers are written through clouds; and so on. Cultural forms and gadgets that were once separate are now linked. The currently fashionable notion of convergence doesn’t quite capture the vastness of this integration, which includes any object with a circuit board, scores of accessories that plug into it, and a global nexus of labor and environmental inputs and effects that produce and flow from it. In 2007, a combination of ICT/CE and media production accounted for between 2 and 3 percent of all greenhouse gases emitted around the world (“Gartner Estimates,”; International Telecommunication Union; Malmodin et al.). Between twenty and fifty million tonnes of electronic waste (e-waste) are generated annually, much of it via discarded cell phones and computers, which affluent populations throw out regularly in order to buy replacements. (Presumably this fits the narcissism of small differences that distinguishes them from their own past.) E-waste is historically produced in the Global North—Australasia, Western Europe, Japan, and the US—and dumped in the Global South—Latin America, Africa, Eastern Europe, Southern and Southeast Asia, and China. It takes the form of a thousand different, often deadly, materials for each electrical and electronic gadget. This trend is changing as India and China generate their own media detritus (Robinson; Herat). Enclosed hard drives, backlit screens, cathode ray tubes, wiring, capacitors, and heavy metals pose few risks while these materials remain encased. But once discarded and dismantled, ICT/CE have the potential to expose workers and ecosystems to a morass of toxic components. Theoretically, “outmoded” parts could be reused or swapped for newer parts to refurbish devices. But items that are defined as waste undergo further destruction in order to collect remaining parts and valuable metals, such as gold, silver, copper, and rare-earth elements. This process causes serious health risks to bones, brains, stomachs, lungs, and other vital organs, in addition to birth defects and disrupted biological development in children. Medical catastrophes can result from lead, cadmium, mercury, other heavy metals, poisonous fumes emitted in search of precious metals, and such carcinogenic compounds as polychlorinated biphenyls, dioxin, polyvinyl chloride, and flame retardants (Maxwell and Miller 13). The United States’ Environmental Protection Agency estimates that by 2007 US residents owned approximately three billion electronic devices, with an annual turnover rate of 400 million units, and well over half such purchases made by women. Overall CE ownership varied with age—adults under 45 typically boasted four gadgets; those over 65 made do with one. The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) says US$145 billion was expended in the sector in 2006 in the US alone, up 13% on the previous year. The CEA refers joyously to a “consumer love affair with technology continuing at a healthy clip.” In the midst of a recession, 2009 saw $165 billion in sales, and households owned between fifteen and twenty-four gadgets on average. By 2010, US$233 billion was spent on electronic products, three-quarters of the population owned a computer, nearly half of all US adults owned an MP3 player, and 85% had a cell phone. By all measures, the amount of ICT/CE on the planet is staggering. As investigative science journalist, Elizabeth Grossman put it: “no industry pushes products into the global market on the scale that high-tech electronics does” (Maxwell and Miller 2). In 2007, “of the 2.25 million tons of TVs, cell phones and computer products ready for end-of-life management, 18% (414,000 tons) was collected for recycling and 82% (1.84 million tons) was disposed of, primarily in landfill” (Environmental Protection Agency 1). Twenty million computers fell obsolete across the US in 1998, and the rate was 130,000 a day by 2005. It has been estimated that the five hundred million personal computers discarded in the US between 1997 and 2007 contained 6.32 billion pounds of plastics, 1.58 billion pounds of lead, three million pounds of cadmium, 1.9 million pounds of chromium, and 632000 pounds of mercury (Environmental Protection Agency; Basel Action Network and Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition 6). The European Union is expected to generate upwards of twelve million tons annually by 2020 (Commission of the European Communities 17). While refrigerators and dangerous refrigerants account for the bulk of EU e-waste, about 44% of the most toxic e-waste measured in 2005 came from medium-to-small ICT/CE: computer monitors, TVs, printers, ink cartridges, telecommunications equipment, toys, tools, and anything with a circuit board (Commission of the European Communities 31-34). Understanding the enormity of the environmental problems caused by making, using, and disposing of media technologies should arrest our enthusiasm for them. But intellectual correctives to the “love affair” with technology, or technophilia, have come and gone without establishing much of a foothold against the breathtaking flood of gadgets and the propaganda that proclaims their awe-inspiring capabilities.[i] There is a peculiar enchantment with the seeming magic of wireless communication, touch-screen phones and tablets, flat-screen high-definition televisions, 3-D IMAX cinema, mobile computing, and so on—a totemic, quasi-sacred power that the historian of technology David Nye has named the technological sublime (Nye Technological Sublime 297).[ii] We demonstrate in our book why there is no place for the technological sublime in projects to green the media. But first we should explain why such symbolic power does not accrue to more mundane technologies; after all, for the time-strapped cook, a pressure cooker does truly magical things. Three important qualities endow ICT/CE with unique symbolic potency—virtuality, volume, and novelty. The technological sublime of media technology is reinforced by the “virtual nature of much of the industry’s content,” which “tends to obscure their responsibility for a vast proliferation of hardware, all with high levels of built-in obsolescence and decreasing levels of efficiency” (Boyce and Lewis 5). Planned obsolescence entered the lexicon as a new “ethics” for electrical engineering in the 1920s and ’30s, when marketers, eager to “habituate people to buying new products,” called for designs to become quickly obsolete “in efficiency, economy, style, or taste” (Grossman 7-8).[iii] This defines the short lifespan deliberately constructed for computer systems (drives, interfaces, operating systems, batteries, etc.) by making tiny improvements incompatible with existing hardware (Science and Technology Council of the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences 33-50; Boyce and Lewis). With planned obsolescence leading to “dizzying new heights” of product replacement (Rogers 202), there is an overstated sense of the novelty and preeminence of “new” media—a “cult of the present” is particularly dazzled by the spread of electronic gadgets through globalization (Mattelart and Constantinou 22). References to the symbolic power of media technology can be found in hymnals across the internet and the halls of academe: technologies change us, the media will solve social problems or create new ones, ICTs transform work, monopoly ownership no longer matters, journalism is dead, social networking enables social revolution, and the media deliver a cleaner, post-industrial, capitalism. Here is a typical example from the twilight zone of the technological sublime (actually, the OECD): A major feature of the knowledge-based economy is the impact that ICTs have had on industrial structure, with a rapid growth of services and a relative decline of manufacturing. Services are typically less energy intensive and less polluting, so among those countries with a high and increasing share of services, we often see a declining energy intensity of production … with the emergence of the Knowledge Economy ending the old linear relationship between output and energy use (i.e. partially de-coupling growth and energy use) (Houghton 1) This statement mixes half-truths and nonsense. In reality, old-time, toxic manufacturing has moved to the Global South, where it is ascendant; pollution levels are rising worldwide; and energy consumption is accelerating in residential and institutional sectors, due almost entirely to ICT/CE usage, despite advances in energy conservation technology (a neat instance of the age-old Jevons Paradox). In our book we show how these are all outcomes of growth in ICT/CE, the foundation of the so-called knowledge-based economy. ICT/CE are misleadingly presented as having little or no material ecological impact. In the realm of everyday life, the sublime experience of electronic machinery conceals the physical work and material resources that go into them, while the technological sublime makes the idea that more-is-better palatable, axiomatic; even sexy. In this sense, the technological sublime relates to what Marx called “the Fetishism which attaches itself to the products of labour” once they are in the hands of the consumer, who lusts after them as if they were “independent beings” (77). There is a direct but unseen relationship between technology’s symbolic power and the scale of its environmental impact, which the economist Juliet Schor refers to as a “materiality paradox” —the greater the frenzy to buy goods for their transcendent or nonmaterial cultural meaning, the greater the use of material resources (40-41). We wrote Greening the Media knowing that a study of the media’s effect on the environment must work especially hard to break the enchantment that inflames popular and elite passions for media technologies. We understand that the mere mention of the political-economic arrangements that make shiny gadgets possible, or the environmental consequences of their appearance and disappearance, is bad medicine. It’s an unwelcome buzz kill—not a cool way to converse about cool stuff. But we didn’t write the book expecting to win many allies among high-tech enthusiasts and ICT/CE industry leaders. We do not dispute the importance of information and communication media in our lives and modern social systems. We are media people by profession and personal choice, and deeply immersed in the study and use of emerging media technologies. But we think it’s time for a balanced assessment with less hype and more practical understanding of the relationship of media technologies to the biosphere they inhabit. Media consumers, designers, producers, activists, researchers, and policy makers must find new and effective ways to move ICT/CE production and consumption toward ecologically sound practices. In the course of this project, we found in casual conversation, lecture halls, classroom discussions, and correspondence, consistent and increasing concern with the environmental impact of media technology, especially the deleterious effects of e-waste toxins on workers, air, water, and soil. We have learned that the grip of the technological sublime is not ironclad. Its instability provides a point of departure for investigating and criticizing the relationship between the media and the environment. The media are, and have been for a long time, intimate environmental participants. Media technologies are yesterday’s, today’s, and tomorrow’s news, but rarely in the way they should be. The prevailing myth is that the printing press, telegraph, phonograph, photograph, cinema, telephone, wireless radio, television, and internet changed the world without changing the Earth. In reality, each technology has emerged by despoiling ecosystems and exposing workers to harmful environments, a truth obscured by symbolic power and the power of moguls to set the terms by which such technologies are designed and deployed. Those who benefit from ideas of growth, progress, and convergence, who profit from high-tech innovation, monopoly, and state collusion—the military-industrial-entertainment-academic complex and multinational commandants of labor—have for too long ripped off the Earth and workers. As the current celebration of media technology inevitably winds down, perhaps it will become easier to comprehend that digital wonders come at the expense of employees and ecosystems. This will return us to Max Weber’s insistence that we understand technology in a mundane way as a “mode of processing material goods” (27). Further to understanding that ordinariness, we can turn to the pioneering conversation analyst Harvey Sacks, who noted three decades ago “the failures of technocratic dreams [:] that if only we introduced some fantastic new communication machine the world will be transformed.” Such fantasies derived from the very banality of these introductions—that every time they took place, one more “technical apparatus” was simply “being made at home with the rest of our world’ (548). Media studies can join in this repetitive banality. Or it can withdraw the welcome mat for media technologies that despoil the Earth and wreck the lives of those who make them. In our view, it’s time to green the media by greening media studies. References “A Cyber-House Divided.” Economist 4 Sep. 2010: 61-62. “Gartner Estimates ICT Industry Accounts for 2 Percent of Global CO2 Emissions.” Gartner press release. 6 April 2007. ‹http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=503867›. Basel Action Network and Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition. Exporting Harm: The High-Tech Trashing of Asia. Seattle: Basel Action Network, 25 Feb. 2002. Benjamin, Walter. “Central Park.” Trans. Lloyd Spencer with Mark Harrington. New German Critique 34 (1985): 32-58. Biagioli, Mario. “Postdisciplinary Liaisons: Science Studies and the Humanities.” Critical Inquiry 35.4 (2009): 816-33. Boyce, Tammy and Justin Lewis, eds. Climate Change and the Media. New York: Peter Lang, 2009. Commission of the European Communities. “Impact Assessment.” Commission Staff Working Paper accompanying the Proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) (recast). COM (2008) 810 Final. Brussels: Commission of the European Communities, 3 Dec. 2008. Environmental Protection Agency. Management of Electronic Waste in the United States. Washington, DC: EPA, 2007 Environmental Protection Agency. Statistics on the Management of Used and End-of-Life Electronics. Washington, DC: EPA, 2008 Grossman, Elizabeth. Tackling High-Tech Trash: The E-Waste Explosion & What We Can Do about It. New York: Demos, 2008. ‹http://www.demos.org/pubs/e-waste_FINAL.pdf› Herat, Sunil. “Review: Sustainable Management of Electronic Waste (e-Waste).” Clean 35.4 (2007): 305-10. Houghton, J. “ICT and the Environment in Developing Countries: Opportunities and Developments.” Paper prepared for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 2009. International Telecommunication Union. ICTs for Environment: Guidelines for Developing Countries, with a Focus on Climate Change. 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Maxwell, Richard and Toby Miller. Greening the Media. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. Nye, David E. American Technological Sublime. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1994. Nye, David E. Technology Matters: Questions to Live With. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. 2007. Orwell, George. “As I Please.” Tribune. 12 May 1944. Richtel, Matt. “Consumers Hold on to Products Longer.” New York Times: B1, 26 Feb. 2011. Robinson, Brett H. “E-Waste: An Assessment of Global Production and Environmental Impacts.” Science of the Total Environment 408.2 (2009): 183-91. Rogers, Heather. Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage. New York: New Press, 2005. Sacks, Harvey. Lectures on Conversation. Vols. I and II. Ed. Gail Jefferson. Malden: Blackwell, 1995. Schiller, Herbert I. Information and the Crisis Economy. Norwood: Ablex Publishing, 1984. Schor, Juliet B. Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth. New York: Penguin, 2010. Science and Technology Council of the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The Digital Dilemma: Strategic Issues in Archiving and Accessing Digital Motion Picture Materials. Los Angeles: Academy Imprints, 2007. Weber, Max. “Remarks on Technology and Culture.” Trans. Beatrix Zumsteg and Thomas M. Kemple. Ed. Thomas M. Kemple. Theory, Culture [i] The global recession that began in 2007 has been the main reason for some declines in Global North energy consumption, slower turnover in gadget upgrades, and longer periods of consumer maintenance of electronic goods (Richtel). [ii] The emergence of the technological sublime has been attributed to the Western triumphs in the post-Second World War period, when technological power supposedly supplanted the power of nature to inspire fear and astonishment (Nye Technology Matters 28). Historian Mario Biagioli explains how the sublime permeates everyday life through technoscience: "If around 1950 the popular imaginary placed science close to the military and away from the home, today’s technoscience frames our everyday life at all levels, down to our notion of the self" (818). [iii] This compulsory repetition is seemingly undertaken each time as a novelty, governed by what German cultural critic Walter Benjamin called, in his awkward but occasionally illuminating prose, "the ever-always-the-same" of "mass-production" cloaked in "a hitherto unheard-of significance" (48).

At the University of Port Elizabeth (UPE), the End User Computing course (EUC) acts as a service course for many departments. This implies that many students are forced by their curricula to register for this course. The ever-increasing numbers in EUC place a considerable load on existing human and physical resources. In lecture groups of 120 –160, students rarely get the attention they need, and the pace at which the content is delivered (too slow or too fast) may also inhibit the learning process. During an initial investigation into E-learning at UPE in 1999, a prototype virtual classroom was developed. There were, however, a number of problems with this prototype. Firstly, it was implemented using a number of different technologies, which made it difficult to extend and maintain. Secondly, it only addressed some aspects of an E-learning environment, which proved insufficient for the EUC course. In the existing EUC course at UPE, the students are already exposed to some E-learning concepts, as a section of their skills training component is handled by using multimedia software in a simulated environment. The objective of this project was to extend the E-learning component further to determine the advantages and disadvantages of using E-learning to support information technology (IT) education in a contact-university environment. This project included a literature search and survey of existing E-learning environments at other universities. This research was used to develop a draft framework for an E-learning environment. The framework was used to select a tool to create an E-learning environment at UPE. An experiment was designed using this E-learning environment to support two IT courses at different year levels. The results of the experiment were analysed using qualitative and quantitative methods to determine the impact of using E-learning to support IT education at UPE. The results of this research show that E-learning can be used to support IT education at UPE. More success, however, was achieved at postgraduate level than at first-year level. Making use of Elearning increased student satisfaction and promoted active learning, while providing benefits like convenience, communication, flexibility and scaffolding. We conclude, therefore, that E-learning can provide a flexible approach to IT education in a university environment in the future.

The aim of the study was to examine the implementation of digital preservation practices in academic libraries in South Africa in the light of the rapid changing information environment. The study looked into the strategies, systems and tools being employed to support digital preservation programmes and the costs associated with the various digital preservation programmes. The study was guided by various digital preservation theories and models,namely Davies’ (2000) Policy, Strategy and Resources (PSR) troika model, Kenney and McGovern’s (2003) three leg stool, Corrado and Moulaison‘s (2014) preservation triad and the Carnegie Mellon University’s (1990) Digital Preservation Capability Maturity (DPCM) model and Open Archival Information System (OAIS) model by OCLC (2002), underpinned by the survey research design, triangulation of questionnaires and document analysis as data collection methods. Out of 27 questionnaires distributed to academic institutions, 22 (81.5%) were completed. Quantitative data was analysed using descriptive analysis whilst content analysis was used for qualitative data obtained from document analysis. Findings revealed that academic libraries in South Africa were significantly affected by the changes to the digital environment. Most academic libraries face many challenges that hinder the effective implementation of digital preservation. The problems include: lack of funding, lack of skills and training and technology obsolescence. The study identified migration, bit preservation, replication and risk management approaches as the most widely implemented preservation strategies to address preservation challenges faced by academic libraries in South Africa. Although various preservation systems and tools are being developed to enable description, discovery, delivery and preservation of digital collections, there was expressed lack of awareness about digital preservation standards and preservation support organisations. The study also observed that, in some instances, the academic institutions were not fully involved in collaborative and partnerships with other institutions. By collaborating and partnering with other institutions, they would be exposed to new ideas, strategies and tools, and be able to acquire knowledge and skills needed to successfully preserve and manage their digital resources. The findings revealed that the implementation of policies and strategies, provision of adequate resources, sufficient funding and digital preservation knowledge and skills are some of the major factors influencing digital preservation sustainability in academic libraries. This study, therefore, recommends that these institutions can address some of the digital preservation challenges if they leverage on these factors. The study also made several recommendations on how digital preservation can be successfully implemented, and it further proposed a framework for preservation of digital resources in academic libraries, mapped to international preservation models and standards.
Information Science
D. Litt. et Phil. (Information Science)

This research seeks to establish how e-learning may contribute towards knowledge construction for Management Accounting students at the University of South Africa. More specifically, the research is designed to investigate how educational technologies like e-learning may benefit and improve the teaching and learning of Management Accounting at Unisa. Educators need to understand how students learn so that they can establish suitable learning strategies. Studies have shown that generally, e-learning applications are little used, sometimes because of inappropriate content and technologies. Other prohibitive factors are costs, poor or inadequate technology infrastructure and a shortage of human resources. On the strength of a comprehensive literature survey, a framework to address and manage challenging aspects of teaching and e-learning were developed. Problem areas and critical success factors were considered. The said framework ought to assist with organising complex issues and reveal parts that need further work. The utility of the framework was evaluated through a staged process. First, it was tested and evaluated through the model of a lecture. Secondly, both qualitative and quantitative surveys among university lectures and students were conducted to further confirm the applicability of the framework. Though the outcome of the validations were satisfactory, more research needs to be carried out over a longer period of time in order to determine the scalability of the framework and to remove any inconsistencies. Aspects of the framework could be used to incorporate ICTs, e.g. the use of spreadsheets and the Learning Village into communities of practice.
Hierdie navorsing poog om vas te stel hoe e-leer kan bydra tot kenniskonstruksie vir Bestuursrekeningkunde-studente aan die Universiteit van Suid-Afrika. Die navorsing is meer spesifiek ontwerp om vas te stel hoe opvoedkundetegnologieë soos e-leer die onderrig en leer van Bestuursrekeningkunde by Unisa kan bevorder en verbeter. Opvoeders moet verstaan hoe studente leer sodat hulle geskikte leerstrategieë kan ontwikkel. Studies toon dat e-leertoepassings normaalweg min gebruik word, soms omdat die inhoud en tegnologieë nie toepaslik is nie. Ander faktore wat dit belemmer, sluit in onkoste, swak of onvoldoende tegnologie-infrastruktuur en ’n tekort aan mensehulpbronne. ’n Raamwerk om die uitdagings van onderrig en e-leer te bestuur, is op grond van ’n omvattende literatuurstudie ontwikkel. Probleemareas en kritiese suksesfaktore is in gedagte gehou. Die genoemde raamwerk behoort van nut te wees vir die organisering van ingewikkelde kwessies en toon watter dele verdere werk vereis. Die bruikbaarheid van die raamwerk is deur middel van ’n stapsgewyse proses geëvalueer. Eerstens is dit getoets en geëvalueer op grond van ’n lesingsmodel. Tweedens is kwalitatiewe en kwantitatiewe meningspeilings geloods; sowel universiteitsdosente as -studente is versoek om die toepaslikheid van die raamwerk te bevestig. Alhoewel die uitkoms van die validasies bevredigend was, moet verdere navorsing oor ’n langer tydperk gedoen word om die skaleerbaarheid van die raamwerk te bepaal en enige teenstrydighede uit die weg te ruim. Aspekte van die raamwerk kan gebruik word om IKT’s, bv die gebruik van sigblaaie en die Learning Village, by praktyksgemeenskappe te inkorporeer.
Ucwaningo lufuna ukuthola ukuthi ngabe ukufunda nge-e-learning noma ngendlela yeelektroniki kungafaka kanjani esivivaneni ekwakheni ulwazi kubafundi be- Management Accounting eYunivesithi yeNingizimu Afrika noma i-University of South Africa. Ngokuqonde ngqo, ucwaningo ludizayinwe ukuthi luphenyisise ngkouthi amatheknoloji emfundo afana ne-e-learning angaba nenzuzo kanjani kanye nokuthuthukisa ukufunda nokufundisa kwi-Management Accounting eUnisa. Abafundisi kudingeke baqondisise ukuthi izitshudeni zifunda kanjani ukuze bakwazi ukuthola amasu afanele okufunda. Izinhlaka eziningi zocwaningo ezenziwe zibonise ukuthi ngokunabile, ama-application amaningi e-e-learning asetshenziswa kancane, kodwa ngesinye isikhathi lokhu kubangelwa wukuthi kusuke kunengqikithi engahambisani kahle ngokufanele kanye namatheknoloji angafanele. Ezinye izinto eziyizihibe, zindleko, ingqalasizinda ye-theknoloji yezinga eliphansi noma engenele kahle kanye nokusweleka kwabantu abawusizo. Ngokulandela imibhalo efundwe ngokujulile, kwenziwe uhlaka lokubhekana nokuphatha izinselele maqondana nokufunda nokufundisa kwase kwenziwa nge-e-learning. Kubonelelwe nemikhakhe enezinkinga kanye nokubhekana nezindawo ezinomphumela obambekayo nobalulekile. Uhlaka okukhulunywa ngalo kumele lusize ekuhleleni izinto eziyisixakaxaka kanye nokuveza izingxenye ezisadinga ukuthi kubhekwane nazo ukuzixazulula. Ukusetshenziswa kohlaka kuye kwahlolwa ngezinqubo ezinezigaba. Esokuqala isigaba, siye sathestwa kanye nokuhlolwa ngokusebenzisa imodela yesifundo. Esesibili isigaba, besingesokwenza ama-qualitative nama-quantitative survey kubafundisi baseyunivesithi kanye nabafundi, ukuqinisekisa ukusebenza kahle kohlaka. Ngisho noma ukubheka imiphumela yokuqinisekisa uhlolo ibiyenelisa, kusadingeka ukuthi kwenziwe olunye ucwaningo, esikhathini eside ukuze ukusetshenziswa kohlaka kuye ngokungezeleka ukubandakanya iningi (scalability), kanye nokuqeda izinto ezenza ukuthi kube nokwehluka-hluka nokungahambelani kahle ekusetshenzisweni (inconsistencies). Izingxenye zohlaka zingasetshenziswa ukwengamela ama-ICTs, isib. ukusetshenziswa kwama-spreadsheets kanye ne- Learning Village kulawo maqembu asebenzisa uhlaka.
Management Accounting
Ph. D. (Accounting Science)