Technology does not necessarily make people learn better or faster. What it does do is it enables us to learn and teach more efficiently, meaning we use fewer resources and can reach more students.
“Using technology, we can do more with less and have larger classes. That’s the only thing that has been scientifically proven so far. This does not mean that lecturers can carry on teaching without bringing technology into their classes.
“Students have smartphones and tablets, and if we don’t make their education moments memorable, we will lose them,” says Prof Seugnet Blignaut, leader of Technology Enhanced Learning for Higher Education (TELHE).
The TELHE project started out at the Potchefstroom Campus but has since been extended to the Vaal Triangle Campus, where Prof Blignaut is now based, and has a strong track record in related research on serious games, eye-tracking and speech recognition technologies. These fields have the potential to help create memorable education moments that hold students’ attention.
“Eye-tracking research can tell us where a person looks first and whether the eye is seeing what it needs to see, for example in a visual presentation,” says Prof Blignaut, who has a PhD in computer-assisted learning (the first such qualification to be awarded to a South African).
Similarly, serious games, which are interactive video games that are both educational and entertaining, can help keep students’ concentration. The TELHE team has three main research priorities: establishing a framework for technology-enhanced learning at universities; designing, developing and evaluating software apps (applications) for higher education, and investigating the effectiveness of teaching with technology.
The common thread running through all three areas is people, and specifically how they interact with learning technologies. The experiences of lecturers, especially those who did not grow up with internet and mobile phones, are well worth looking into.
Catch up or lose out
“The older generation has to catch up or lose the younger generation,” says Prof Blignaut. “Gone are the days when you could give a 50-minute lecture without any stimulation than your voice. Fortunately, there are many lecturers and teachers over 40 who are really grasping the idea of technology-enhanced learning and running with it.”
Among them are about 45 teachers in Butterworth in the Eastern Cape who in 2013 did NWU honours degrees in education through distance delivery.
“These were teachers in remote rural areas,” she says. “To enable them to interact with each other and share experiences, they became part of a virtual learning community through a Facebook page called Face Funda – ‘knowledge in your face’.
“After six we asked them what results they had achieved and they said they were thrilled with their new social media skills. It wasn’t always easy for them, though. One of the teachers said his own children laughed at him when he used Facebook and that it was hard to be taught by a child.”
Asked what NWU academics are doing particularly well in using technology for teaching and learning, Prof Blignaut says: “Theology – they are right at the forefront of technology-enhanced learning.”
Theology students on the Potchefstroom Campus no longer receive their study guides on paper and instead download these via the internet from the NWU’s eFundi learning management system. All the faculty’s students have access to the internet and a laptop is issued to every first-year student. A critical success factor for implementing technology-enhanced learning is to involve lecturers fully from the outset.
“Resistance to change is the most important stumbling block in implementing technology-enhanced learning,” she says. “Top-down decision-making creates resistance and negative attitudes in lecturers. To become a motivated and transformed teaching corps, lecturers have the need to be involved from the initiation phase.”