An Analysis of Collaborative Learning as a Prevalent In-structional Strategy of South Africa Government eLearning Practices.

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Bibliographic Details
Title:	An Analysis of Collaborative Learning as a Prevalent In-structional Strategy of South Africa Government eLearning Practices.
Authors:	Mkhize, Peter¹ mkhizpl@unisa.ac.za, Huisman, Magda¹ madga.huisman@nwu.ac.za, Lubbe, Sam¹ Sam.Lubbe@nwu.ac.za
Source:	Proceedings of the European Conference on e-Learning (ECEL). 2011, p492-501. 10p. 2 Diagrams.
Subject Terms:	Collaborative learning, Mobile learning, Teaching methods, Teaching aids
Geographic Terms:	South Africa
Abstract:	A skills shortage seem to be engulfing the South African workplace in all economic sectors (Statistics South Africa 2010). In turn, increasing unemployment rates feed off such lack of critical skills, that cripples the productive capability of those who are suppose to be economically active. Subsequent to the 2001 parliamentary decision to migrate the government's information system (IS) to an open source platform, the State Information Technology Agency has been faced with the task, among others, to facilitate training during and after the migration process. According to Department of Public Service and Administration (2006), different instructional delivery methods will be used - including eLearning, which allows for a lifelong learning, collaborative learning, flexible, just-in-time, just-in-context learning experience for users who are learning the new platform. In this paper, the researcher will determine the prevalent instructional strategy in relation to current instructional technology avail-able to support eLearning practices in SITA. In doing so, the authors will employ grounded theory analysis techniques within a case study conducted in SITA - the custodian of the open source migration project (Charmaz 2006). The grounded theory analysis technique allows the authors to create a relational networks of codes, as they emerge, for interview transcripts that will be interpreted to determine the instructional value of the instructional tools used in learning practices. In this study, an instructional strategy framework is developed based on code networks as emerged from grounded theory analysis. The result proves to favour collaborative learning as an efficient and effective instructional strategy to support eLearning practices in the public sector, given multiple constraints, towards realising a fully-fledged eLearning programme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
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Database:	Education Research Complete

Description
Abstract:	A skills shortage seem to be engulfing the South African workplace in all economic sectors (Statistics South Africa 2010). In turn, increasing unemployment rates feed off such lack of critical skills, that cripples the productive capability of those who are suppose to be economically active. Subsequent to the 2001 parliamentary decision to migrate the government's information system (IS) to an open source platform, the State Information Technology Agency has been faced with the task, among others, to facilitate training during and after the migration process. According to Department of Public Service and Administration (2006), different instructional delivery methods will be used - including eLearning, which allows for a lifelong learning, collaborative learning, flexible, just-in-time, just-in-context learning experience for users who are learning the new platform. In this paper, the researcher will determine the prevalent instructional strategy in relation to current instructional technology avail-able to support eLearning practices in SITA. In doing so, the authors will employ grounded theory analysis techniques within a case study conducted in SITA - the custodian of the open source migration project (Charmaz 2006). The grounded theory analysis technique allows the authors to create a relational networks of codes, as they emerge, for interview transcripts that will be interpreted to determine the instructional value of the instructional tools used in learning practices. In this study, an instructional strategy framework is developed based on code networks as emerged from grounded theory analysis. The result proves to favour collaborative learning as an efficient and effective instructional strategy to support eLearning practices in the public sector, given multiple constraints, towards realising a fully-fledged eLearning programme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
ISSN:	20488637