Access & Use Project

About the project

Access to and use of ICTs for teaching and learning in Higher Education Institutions in South Africa.

Phase 1 (2004-2006): The Virtual Mobius Strip was the first in a series of studies on higher education students and staff access to and use of ICTs for teaching and learning. It was conducted regionally in 2004 in five higher education institutions in the Western Cape, South Africa (with the support of a cross-institutional Carnegie Grant).

Phase 2 (2007-2008): In 2007 (with the support of an NRF Grant), we expanded the study to include a survey of students and staff in 6 South African Universities across 5 provinces. The study drew built on the previous research and was expanded to investigate use of new Web 2.0 technologies both soically and academically.

Phase 3 (2009-2010): We have been funded by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) to build on this research through a qualitative investigation of specific categories of students namely non users in conditions of access,  high/moderate users in low access conditions, and low/high users in high access conditions.

Phase 4 (2011-2012):  We have obtained a grant extension from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) to incorporate a different methodological approach - digital ethnographies- that will enable us to observe and capturing additional insights into students’ day- to-day activities.

Outputs

We have a variety of outputs from the project which include a full report on the Virtual Mobius Strip, peer reviewed papers in various journals and conference proceedings and informal presentations.

People

The two key staff members involved in this project are Laura Czerniewicz (principle investigator) and Cheryl Brown (project co-ordinator and researcher). We have also been assisted by very competent research assistants throughout the project. Currently we have four "on site" researchers, Karen Ngwenya at Fort Hare, Nompilo Tshuma at Rhodes, Hennie Erasmus at Free State and Adone Kitching at UCT. Travis Noakes and Kelsey Wiens have also joined the project to assist with the analysis and communication phase.