NADEOSA Conference Papers 2000 template

This paper has been developed at very short notice, in response to a request from the Council on Higher Education (CHE). While we are confident of the validity of the observations and suggestions made in the paper (particularly given the research processes on which we have drawn in compiling this document) [1], we are also acutely aware that time for consultation and discussion has been exceptionally limited (although we did obviously undertake some specific consultations as part of developing this paper). Therefore, we wish to stress that this paper should be viewed strictly as a discussion paper seeking to contribute to the unfolding debate about how best to manage the size and shape of South African higher education.

Because the paper targets a potentially quite wide readership with varying levels of exposure to recent debates in South Africa and internationally about education and technology, we have chosen to incorporate some sections of previous reports to provide a cohesive and detailed argument. This does, however, mean that the paper has become longer than expected. To counterbalance this, we have summarized our key arguments below (and repeated at the end of the document) for those already familiar with the debates presented. For those unfamiliar with these debates, however, we caution against simply relying on the argument summary, as such summaries inevitably tend to over-simplify complex problems and challenges.

The Central Arguments

ICTs themselves have no intrinsic capacity for action, and hence cannot impact on anything. Rather, people all around the world can and do apply ICTs to perform a wide – and growing – range of tasks. However, reflections on the impact of ICT cannot be limited to how ‘we’ use those technologies. The way in which other people, other organizations, other countries use ICTs is as likely to have an impact on us as how we use the technologies. Thus, on the one hand, South African higher education cannot simply behave as if technological developments are not occurring nor can it not respond to the challenges of how to use ICTs effectively, because to do so is to leave the higher education system vulnerable to ways in which other organizations in South Africa and elsewhere in the world are using the technologies to change their patterns of operation.

The long-term impact of ICTs on higher education is still largely a matter of conjecture, and will only really start to become fully clear over the next fifteen to twenty years. This makes it particularly difficult to establish frameworks to regulate the systems into which they are being integrated. Nevertheless, certain trends in ICT use are emerging:

• It is allowing for exponential increases in the transfer of data through increasingly globalized communication systems;

ICT networks have significantly expanded the potential for organizations to expand their sphere of operations and influence beyond their traditional geographical boundaries;

It is expanding the range of options available to education planners in terms of the teaching and learning strategies they choose to use, providing an often bewildering array of choices in terms of systems design options, teaching and learning combinations, and strategies for administering and managing education;

Systemically, it is tending to accentuate social disparities between rich and poor;

It is reducing barriers to entry of potential competitors to higher education institutions, by reducing the importance of geographical distance as a barrier, by reducing the overhead and logistical requirements of running education programmes and research agencies, and by expanding cheap access to information resources.

Changing patterns of organizational structures and operations, supported by the ICT trends outlined in point 2, are making it increasingly easier for new players to perform roles previously reserved for higher education institutions and to progressively expand their domains of operation. Many forms of competition pose very real threats to higher education, and all of them are outside the public higher education system. Such competition cannot be curtailed through regulation, as it will simply mutate to bypass that regulation. Regretfully, though, public higher education institutions still see themselves as primarily competing with one another, with the result that the system as a whole is becoming progressively less competitive. Strategies that deal with the effect that ICTs will have on the size and shape of higher education will have to focus specifically on dealing with these external threats.

The first step towards allowing more effective integration of ICTs into higher education is to create simpler and more flexible policy frameworks, rather than developing new policy instruments that are added to an already overly complicated policy environment. The number of areas and elements of education provision that need to be centrally regulated is far fewer than those currently being regulated. Attempts to regulate too many aspects of education implementation make it impossible to regulate anything effectively, as resource constraints and the complexity of detailed regulatory frameworks will derail such efforts. Regulation is important, but there need to be only a few, simple and clear indicators of quality that ensure accountability. They should focus on fewer aspects of quality, and ensure that they are met. It is also important to differentiate between regulation and support. Regulations set rules that people must follow or face legal action of some kind, while support creates no such obligations. Much work currently being done on regulating aspects of higher education provision should shift from regulating education provision to supporting its effective implementation.

Increased flexibility and simplicity of policy frameworks are not important for their own sakes, but because they are necessary prerequisites for meeting the policy challenges outlined in points 1 to 3. Integration of ICTs into systems inevitably creates ongoing pressures for change to the structures and operations of those systems. The more complex policies and procedures become, the less flexible they become and the harder they make it to allow for these shifts.

Any attempts to integrate ICT applications into higher education will depend, for their success, on the vision of those responsible for planning and implementation. Without a clear vision of how the strengths of ICTs can be harnessed and their weaknesses overcome, any initiative will be doomed to failure. This vision needs to be located in a concrete understanding of what the core functions of higher education actually are.

Arguments about how to harness ICTs most effectively to increase access to higher education should start with understanding how these technologies can be used to improve the efficiency of operations of the underlying systems of higher education. This is where the biggest immediate gains can be achieved, as existing ICT infrastructure within most of these systems can easily be harnessed. Successful application of ICTs in improving systemic efficiency and operations can lead to improvements in delivery of all higher education, regardless of what teaching and learning strategies are finally being used to communicate with students. This means that they contain much more persuasive potential for dealing meaningfully with problems of access and redress than using the same technologies to deliver education to disadvantaged students. They also constitute the most useful starting point for dealing with increasingly diverse forms of competition to public higher education. In particular, investments should be made in developing applications that:

Significantly improve the quality of management information systems (at national and institutional level) and the ability to use these systems to support strategic decision-making and policy implementation; and

Contribute to stimulating free flow of information throughout the higher education system.

Point 7 is not simply about systemic or management issues. At heart, it is, in fact about effective implementation of the core functions of higher education. For example, effective use of ICTs in the domain of teaching and learning flows much more easily when systems have already integrated effectives use of ICTs into their managements and internal communication systems. Without this base, use of ICTs to support delivery of education to learners will always be unsustainable.

Each education intervention should be planned and implemented on its own merits, rather than forced into simplistic, dichotomous categories (such as ‘distance education’ or ‘face-to-face education’), which set arbitrary and unhelpful constraints. Technologies can be applied in a range of ways, to support an almost limitless combination of teaching and learning strategies, and it is essential to keep options as open as possible. This flexibility should form the cornerstone of all planning processes. The national policy framework should also be re-designed to support this more flexible approach to planning and implementation of higher education. Contexts of implementation should be understood before making decisions. Where there is a discrepancy between contexts of implementation and technology choices, the choice will either need to be changed or fully articulated strategies developed to change the context of implementation (although in some cases the latter may prove an unrealistic objective).

Within the broad framework provided above, the following roles for ICTs in supporting teaching and learning are worth considering, amongst others:

Delivery of Educational Resources. ICTs can be used to provide immediately up-to-date resources – using one or more media – to large numbers of educators and learners easily and relatively cheaply. Changes made to resources can become immediately available to educators and students without incurring major additional distribution costs. Resource distribution should, however, not be mistaken for education. An additional benefit that ICTs can bring to designers of online learning resources is the huge resource base that resides on the World Wide Web.

Facilitating Communication. ICTs can be used to support a range of communication strategies, especially easy asynchronous communication between educator and learner and amongst learners. Where appropriate, this communication can be extended to include groups of people rather than just individuals. A major component of this strength is the capacity to support the many requirements for communication to ensure the effective management and administration of the system.

Facilitating Interaction in Resources. Combining the above, it becomes ICTs can provide educators with a range of very interesting opportunities for creating resources that allow learners different levels of interactivity. This can lead to the creation of interesting and exciting interaction for learners with educational resources.

Building and Exploiting Information Bases. There are growing possibilities for building and exploiting information bases Possibly most importantly, it becomes essential to develop effective strategies for storing information in ways that allow it to be very easily manipulated for future purposes. Increasingly value lies not in possessing information, but rather in developing the skills and capacity to manipulate it effectively for new applications. This indicates clearly the importance of developing management information systems that allow for cheap, easy, and logical storage and retrieval of information.

Planning processes should seek, wherever possible, to build on past experiences – positive and negative – from South Africa and around the world. These include:

For any national or institutional planning exercises, a small – but commonly accepted – planning team should be established to drive planning processes. It could be made up of a few individuals selected not to represent key interests, but because of their ability to complete planning tasks effectively. To achieve buy-in effectively, open channels of communication between the planning team and various interested parties should be created, which allow for input from all of these parties before decisions are taken, rather than presenting completed plans.

Maintaining focus on the specific problems that education interventions need to solve is critical to the planning process. This focus is very easily lost, although planners often are unable to see this. Consequently, reflective processes to restore focus should punctuate all stages of planning exercises.

If investments in educational technologies are to make a meaningful and sustainable impact, they will have to be made as part of a broader process of shifting patterns of expenditure on education.

Strategic planning processes will need to manage carefully the expectations and assumptions of competing interested parties, both to ensure that these are balanced constructively and that they do not undermine the implementation of technology-enhanced learning strategies.

Investments in new technologies should be planned and implemented with a view to ensuring that they function as a catalyst for effecting critical changes. For this to work effectively, the ‘marketing’ of the investment needs to be carefully managed, and perceptions of buy-in by critical players needs to be well publicized.

Given current constraints, strategies need to focus narrowly on solving a few key problems. Ultimately, such a plan, which frames systemic change within much longer time-frames than is currently the norm (say, twenty-five years rather than five years), is likely to have an impact much faster than a plan which tries to solve all problems simultaneously.

There is a need for investment in flexible and sustainable infrastructures that will support educational applications in a variety of contexts.

International technical standards and protocols should be adopted if wastage is to be avoided.

Effective use of ICTs in higher education will depend on establishing effective partnerships. The range of expertise required to use ICTs successfully is simply to great to assume that any single organization or even any single sector houses that expertise. Further, strategic partnerships are a critical element of building new visions of how ICTs can be used to greatest effect, as the creativity they generate inevitably opens new possibilities previously not seen. In this regard, it is also not viable to pretend that public-private partnerships can be avoided. Although there are many reasons to be sceptical of such partnerships and their potential to corrupt the core functions of higher education, effective integration of ICTs into higher education cannot take place without private sector involvement.

Introduction

Background to this Report

The CHE has established a Task Team to investigate the size and shape of the South African Higher Education system. Part of the work of that team entails making recommendations on size and shape that will ensure that the country’s higher education system is effectively able to support the country’s socio-economic development and to deal effectively with the many pressures affecting higher education systems around the world. This discussion paper aims to contribute to that process by exploring what roles information and communication technologies (ICTs) might play in sustaining an effective and relevant higher education system in South Africa.

This paper has been developed at the same time as the Task Team has released a discussion document outlining various strategies for streamlining the shape of the South African higher education system. We are aware that many organizations have submitted, or are intending to submit, responses to this document and its proposals. Our intention is, therefore, not to engage these proposals directly, as any analysis of this kind will inevitably become quickly outdated as the debate progresses. Rather, we have sought to engage directly with the following questions:

What are the potential applications of ICTs and how will these applications affect the size and shape of higher education?

What possibilities and pitfalls do these applications hold for South African higher education?

What are the implications of the above for government policy in higher education?

Although the term ‘ICTs’ is growing in use and some common definitions are emerging, we believe it is important to begin our discussion by presenting a description of how we have used the term itself.

What are Information and Communication Technologies?

Information Technology

Understanding the term ‘information and communication technologies’ (or its acronym ICTs) needs to begin with how the term technology itself is used. As Williams notes, this term derives from 17^th Century use of word to describe ‘systematic study…or the terminology of a particular art’. Over time, the word came to be increasingly associated with ‘practical arts’, finally leading to a ‘familiar modern distinction between knowledge (science) and its practical application (technology), within the selected field’.

This modern distinction still holds, but has taken on very specific (some would argue overly narrow) application in most circles when integrated into the composite term ‘information technology’. Most definitions of this phrase make specific reference to electronics and computers, and this certainly holds for most people’s understanding of the term. We do not wish to debate the merits of this reference, instead choosing to present a definition of information technology that we believe is useful for the purposes of this paper:

Electronic technologies for collecting, storing, processing, and communicating information. They can be separated into two main categories: (1) those which process information, such as computer systems, and (2) those which disseminate information, such as telecommunications systems.

Thus, this paper does not seek to discuss all technology in terms of its educational application, although many of the comments made will be applicable to all technology. Instead, we aim to focus explicitly on those technologies described by the above definition.

The definition above would appear to cover both information and communication technologies, raising the question of why the additional composite term has grown in use recently. Although there may be many reasons for this, it is no doubt, in part at least, to make more explicit that the term does actually also cover those technologies covered by category (2) above, a point often missed by people using the term ‘information technology’. In addition, though, we believe that this new term has emerged to reflect the growth in technological convergence of information, communication, and broadcasting technologies. This trend is, therefore, worth exploring briefly.

Technological Convergence

In terms of a dictionary definition, convergence is described as ‘movement towards or terminating in the same point’. In itself, this provides an obvious enough definition, but it requires further explanation in terms of its relevance to technological trends. One simple description of convergence provides a useful starting point for understanding the concept from a technological perspective. In brief, convergence may be described as:

The coming together of two or more disparate disciplines or technologies. For example, the so-called fax revolution was produced by a convergence of telecommunications technology, optical scanning technology, and printing technology.

This description is helpful because it provides an illustration of a completed process of technological convergence, which in turn helps us to separate the general concept from its application to a specific process of technological convergence currently taking place.

From the perspective of this report, however, the term ‘convergence’ will be used to describe one particular process of technological convergence. This can be summarized as follows:

In information technology, convergence is a term for the combining of personal computers, telecommunication, and television into a user experience that is accessible to everyone.

A more detailed analysis of the implications of this might be the follows:

Convergence is an on-going process which entails the coming together of the following:

content from the audiovisual and publishing industries;

potentially separate physical infrastructures (such as those supporting broadcast television or telecommunications services) able to carry similar sorts of information at increasingly lower costs;

the interactive information storage and processing capabilities of the computer world;

the ubiquity, improving functionality and ease of use of consumer electronics.

Convergence is, however, by no means a commonly agreed concept. The European Commission Information Society has, for example, recently completed a Green Paper process on convergence, in which the following was reported:

Some comments suggested that it was unclear exactly what the term convergence represents. For others, convergence defied definition. Yet others predicted a degree of divergence in terms of the range of content and services offered…views on the pace of developments were…cautious. There was wide recognition of the reality of convergence at the level of technology and network infrastructures. But most agreed that this did not mean that convergence of either markets (in terms of the players involved) or services would automatically follow. Convergence was seen as an evolutionary rather than a revolutionary process.

There were clear differences between sectors as to their perception of the extent and speed of these developments, but there was the broad acknowledgement that convergence, however defined, was at an early stage and characterised by uncertainty, in particular about the level of demand there might be for such services. These differences were also reflected in the many of the examples offered as to how converging technologies are influencing both the business world and our everyday lives, many of them based on the growing popularity of the Internet. One important feature in this context was the degree to which new services offered users the possibility to customise and control the information and services received.

An important distinction between developments in the work environment and the home was recognised. Many considered that developments at work would be driven by the Internet, electronic commerce and PC-based activities, and would have an impact on home-use. On the other hand, and despite the increasing take up of computers in the home, digital television, offering entertainment and information, was seen by some as the predominant platform in the home for the foreseeable future.

It is not the purpose of this paper to debate the merits of convergence, but it is necessary to be aware of the above discussions. Most importantly, we believe that the lengthy excerpt provided above is a reasonably accurate summary of the current situation in South Africa. In particular, we believe the following points are worth noting:

Convergence is an evolutionary not revolutionary process;

At technology and network levels, convergence is already a reality; and

There is lack of clarity about how much demand there might be for services in a converged technological environment.

Our discussions below will draw on these three points as appropriate. As importantly, though, our use of the composite term ‘information and communication technologies’ is intended to incorporate those technologies evolving from the process of technological convergence. For us, therefore, it incorporates the full range of broadcasting technologies, particularly as these technologies are creating global opportunities for exponentially increased transfer of digital data).

Eroding a Common Misperception

The above descriptions provide clear boundaries around the concept of ICTs. Despite this, however, it is also worth noting a common misperception about ICTs. When discussing ICTs, many people tend to anthropomorphize the technologies by describing them as if they have innate abilities to perform essentially human functions. This tends to occur most commonly at the individual user level, where computer users often describe computer problems in terms of what the computer has ‘done’ (‘the computer deleted my file’ or ‘the computer won’t send my e-mail’). This process of personification is easily understandable, particularly given that most users know so little about the technicalities of computer operations and programming, that the technologies and their applications are not yet ‘mature’ and hence often very unstable, and that we have become increasingly dependent on well-functioning computer systems in so many areas of our lives (even if we have no direct access to computer infrastructure ourselves).

This tendency does, however, pose a very serious danger when transported to the realm of organizational or national policy-making, as it can leave policy-makers feeling disempowered by technological discourse. For example, one of the questions raised in preparing for this paper was ‘what impact are ICTs having, or likely to have, on the size and shape of South African higher education?’ Of course, the answer is that the technologies themselves will have no impact. This point may sound somewhat banal, but it is fundamental to everything that follows in this report. ICTs themselves have no intrinsic capacity for action, and hence cannot impact on anything. Rather, people all around the world can and do apply ICTs to perform a wide – and growing – range of tasks. These applications are, however, only as effective and creative as the people who implement them, so negative and positive outcomes of ICT use are intrinsically linked to how people use them. ICTs may create opportunities for doing things in new and different ways, but only people can actually harness these possibilities.

At a national or organizational level, however, this is problematized by the reality that reflections on the impact of ICT cannot be limited to how ‘we’ use those technologies. The way in which other people, other organizations, other countries use ICTs is as likely to have an impact on us as how we use the technologies. This has become particularly relevant because one of the most important ways in which people have applied ICTs has been to build massive, interconnected telecommunications networks that span the entire world and allow for transfer of data from anywhere to anywhere else (at a price, of course). Although there is much debate about how this is actually affecting societies around the world, there can be little doubt that it significantly increases the potential for what happens elsewhere to have an impact on South Africa and for international organizations to expand their sphere of operations into South Africa. This is most obviously seen in how global information flow affects currency prices and stock market values, as investors all around the world are able to respond faster (although not necessarily more intelligently) to news affecting their global investments and re-channel those investments based on the news they hear. We will return to the educational issues raised by these possibilities throughout this document.

It is this dimension of ICT use that predominantly leads people to conceptualize ICTs as a phenomenon that has its own impact, because we are not the agents of many of the changes ushered in by ICT use. Regretfully, this notion of ICTs as agents of change is pushed relentlessly by technology marketing campaigns that seek to perpetuate these myths. Buying into this representation of ICTs is, however, very dangerous because it leads to poor quality planning, based on fear of the consequences of not ‘jumping on the technology bandwagon’. Most commonly in education, it can lead planners to believe that the most urgent priority is to invest in technology equipment and infrastructure (which also coincidentally happens to be the easiest activity in the short-term). This type of technology-driven planning still dominates most educational technology projects in South Africa, and its successful implementation resides on a false assumption that, if one simply puts technology infrastructure in place, it will be used (which, in turn, is based on the false belief that ICTs themselves have capacity to initiate change). There is an extensive catalogue of such failed educational technology projects in South Africa that, taking this approach, have seen technology infrastructure fall into disrepair or that have failed because ineffective use of the infrastructure prevents sustainability.

There are, however, notable examples where the application of the technology to solve a specific problem or perform a particular function has had remarkable success. The most obvious example of this in South Africa has probably been the massive growth of ‘pay-as-you-go’ applications for cellular telephony, which have seen telecommunications technologies penetrate markets that had previously been regarded as unreachable and hence marginalized.

The points above are possibly the most important to make in relation to managing the size and shape of higher education. On the one hand, South African higher education cannot simply behave as if technological developments are not occurring nor can it not respond to the challenges of how to use ICTs effectively, because to do so is to leave the higher education system vulnerable to ways in which other organizations in South Africa and elsewhere in the world are using the technologies to change their patterns of operation (we return to this theme in the second section of the report). On the other hand, efforts to respond to these challenges cannot be about the technologies themselves, but should rather focus on working out – through trial and error – what applications of the technologies are most effective in South Africa, and particularly most effective in helping the country reduce gross social inequities. By extension, higher education policy needs to ensure that the South African policy environment supports this exploration, and that we do not allow fear of the unknown to dictate the terms of this exploration. Unfortunately, though, this approach requires significantly more thought and planning than simply purchasing and installing technological equipment, and hence tends not to be favoured in South Africa, where the demand for immediate policy solutions is so great. Although it is no easy task, this simplistic approach to integrating technologies into higher education systems must be avoided, because it is very costly and damaging in the long term.

This paper seeks to contribute to achieving these goals by exploring possible applications for ICTs and how these might shape the country’s higher education policy environment. We begin this by reflecting on ICTs and higher education systems in broad terms. We believe that this is important because so much debate on use of ICTs in higher education focuses exclusively on their teaching and learning applications, although this is only one dimension of their potential functionality.

What is an Appropriate Starting point for the Discussion?

Having noted the above points, it is worth reflecting briefly on where policy discussion on integration of ICT applications into higher education should begin. Conventionally, it tends to turn immediately to discussing teaching and learning applications. Thinking about ICTs to support teaching and learning is, however, a false starting point, as it assumes effective underlying systems that manage and administer that education. Thus, the first set of considerations must examine how to use ICTs to improve the functioning of higher education systems themselves, as this is the most fundamental component of achieving education redress and expanding access (whatever teaching and learning strategies are finally used to provide education itself). This starting point is not, however, simply about management and systems. At heart, it is, in fact about the effective implementation of the core functions of higher education. Effective use of ICTs in the domain of teaching and learning flows much more easily when systems have already integrated effective use of ICTs into their managements and internal communication systems. Without this base, use of ICTs to support delivery of education to learners will always be unsustainable. Therefore, we begin our discussion with the systems of higher education themselves and how they relate to ICTs.

ICTs and Higher Education Systems

ICTs, Social Change, and Emerging Trends

The questions identified for this discussion paper – as listed above – pose very particular research problems, because there are several limitations to the value of either primary or secondary research in this area. ICTs, even in their most basic manifestations, are very recent inventions in the timeline of human societies. Development of ICT applications is possibly most notable at a macro level for the extent to which it has ushered in rapid changes – or the perception of change – in so many facets of life. Unfortunately, though, this change is not clearly defined. There are no clear parameters around the change taking place, nor is there yet clarity about where it is leading (or how fundamental/superficial some of the changes are). While many people have written very eloquently and persuasively on how these technologies will change – or are already changing – various social processes (including higher education), their long-term impact is still largely a matter of conjecture, and will only really start to become fully clear over the next fifteen to twenty years. This makes it particularly difficult to establish frameworks to regulate the systems into which they are being integrated.

Despite this, there can be little doubt that the rapid growth and convergence in functionality of ICTs have initiated certain trends, and that the functionality they provide is being harnessed (for better or worse) by a growing number of higher education systems and organizations around the world. In particular, growing use of ICTs internationally has initiated the following trends, amongst others:

It is allowing for exponential increases in the transfer of data through increasingly globalized communication systems. While this has tremendous potential, proliferation of data transfer does not equate with improved quality of the data itself, with the result that transfer of poor quality information (where quality is defined in terms of its applicability and usefulness to the recipient rather than a so-called ‘objective’ measure, which simply does not exist) is also growing exponentially. More worrying, though, from a higher education perspective, is that being cut off from this ongoing flow of information through lack of or inadequate access to Internet applications will progressively cut off the lifeblood of higher education institutions.

As has been mentioned above, ICT networks have significantly expanded the potential for organizations to expand their sphere of operations and influence beyond their traditional geographical boundaries. This has positive implications for South African higher education institutions, in that it creates opportunities for new kinds of partnerships less bounded by geographical constraints (both within the country and internationally), but it also means that the country is progressively less able to exert any control over who is allowed to enter into competition with South African higher education institutions. How does one regulate a web-based course offered by an American university? If one attempts to control growth of private education providers, what prevents those providers from setting up operations in partnership with international organizations to enable them to continue functioning?

It is expanding the range of options available to education planners in terms of the teaching and learning strategies they choose to use, providing an often bewildering array of choices in terms of systems design options, teaching and learning combinations, and strategies for administering and managing education. This creates exciting opportunities, but also significantly increases risk of investment, as more choice introduces new possibilities for making poor decisions. As importantly, introducing technology into environments where poor education is taking place is much more likely to magnify their weaknesses than to solve them. Further, explosion in the range of options makes regulation of education activities much more difficult, as traditional regulatory frameworks are simply not designed to incorporate the full range of combinations and options currently open to education planners (let alone the options that will arise as ICT development unfolds).

Systemically, it is tending to accentuate social disparities between rich and poor, rather than to reduce them. This is because access to the technologies themselves is an obvious prerequisite (although certainly not a sufficient condition) to be able to harness the afore-mentioned trends to individual, organizational, or social advantage. It is not unreasonable to suggest that this is possibly the most serious concern facing South African policy makers, as perpetuation and/or growth in social inequities is a major threat to social stability (as recent events in Zimbabwe have demonstrated) and create all manner of opportunity for exploitation by the unscrupulous. This problem is not just about internal inequities, but also relates to inequities between South Africa and other countries. ICT use has contributed to the establishment of some highly problematic self-reinforcing cycles of inequity growth, which we illustrate in greater detail below. As use of ICTs by developed countries and developed sectors of South African society cannot reasonably be expected to slow down over the next five to ten years, ignoring these trends in policy only contributes to perpetuating the cycles emerging. The only area in which national policy-makers have any sphere of influence is in South Africa, so using policy to slow down developments in ICT application within the country’s borders is likely only to exacerbate these equity gaps between South Africa and more developed societies. This means that the only viable option is to engage in proactive strategies to harness the potential of ICTs in service of reducing social inequities.

It is reducing barriers to entry of potential competitors to higher education institutions, by reducing the importance of geographical distance as a barrier, by reducing the overhead and logistical requirements of running education programmes and research agencies, and by expanding cheap access to information resources. This point is obviously directly linked to the previous point, but should not be confused with it. One of the challenges facing higher education is that competition for providing its services or fulfilling its functions is no longer coming just from organizations that are structurally similar to higher education institutions. On the contrary, it is plausible that the most likely long-term competition to higher education will come from organizations with fundamentally different organizational structures, such as research agencies, training departments in large corporations, or workplace-based training opportunities at small businesses (which people might come to find to be much more compelling than long, residential degree programmes). Likewise, small NGOs or consultancies with extensive, virtual research networks might be able to perform many of the traditional research functions of universities much more efficiently than universities themselves. While the above examples are not about ICT use per se, the operations of these types of competitors, which are generally more flexible than the average higher education institution, are very well placed to harness ICTs to enable them to perform their functions more cost-efficiently (and possibly better, but also possibly worse) than universities and technikons. There is no attempt in the above to suggest that these forms of competition will necessarily perform better than higher education institutions, although we believe that current structural inefficiencies in the organization of higher education institutions leave those institutions ill-equipped to cope with serious competition. We are, however, convinced that these types of competition are already starting to divert activities away from the higher education system, and hence are eroding its income base. This is a far more serious threat to higher education than any perceived reduction of funding from the national fiscus.

Our descriptions above suggest both that trends initiated by ICT use offer unique opportunities to higher education and that they pose several threats. For this reason, it is critical to turn our attention to the current policy environment, to determine the extent to which it has prepared the higher education system to exploit these opportunities and to cope with the threats. While the observations below are not necessarily specific to higher education, they are as relevant to that sector as any other.

Regulatory Frameworks and Complexity

South Africa is at a critical moment of reviewing the progress it has made as a fledgling democracy, seeking to consolidate its gains and extend these by analysing where intention has been misguided or has not been matched by the practicalities of implementation. This applies particularly to the education system, which is widely acknowledged as a central pillar of any effort to ensure the country’s economic competitiveness and its capacity to deliver on promises of redressing historical imbalances and creating a better life for all. This helps to explain why the education sector has been the focus of so many intensive policy processes over the past five years.

Nevertheless, despite significant achievements in creating a new policy environment, we believe that this intensive attention and activity has not necessarily all had its desired effect. The country’s education policy processes have been the location of some of the most creative ideas internationally, ideas that have been drawn from extensive research and from detailed discussion and debate involving a wide range of interests. Unfortunately, though, it has to be added that – in sum – these good ideas have created a policy environment that is weighing down effective, large-scale delivery of high quality education because it has become far too complicated for a system the size of South African education and has created unrealistic demands in terms of speed of delivery.

Various features of the South African education landscape have exacerbated this problem, and continue to do so in higher education as much as any other sector. Below we describe some of the most relevant.

Attempting to Solve All Problems Simultaneously

Developing countries share at least one common problem; there are more urgent social problems to solve than there are time or resources to solve them. Faced with so many urgent problems, it becomes very difficult – some would argue almost impossible – to establish priorities, as focusing on one course of action over another often involves taking decisions that may be construed as ignoring fundamental human rights or even – at its most extreme – leading to loss of life (through poverty, disease, unemployment, and other core social problems). This makes it increasingly tempting to want to solve all problems together, as prioritization simply forces decisions that are too difficult to take. Education policy reflects this dilemma. In a very short space of time, South Africans have sought to develop policy solutions to almost every conceivable educational problem. Unfortunately, though, we have also discovered that the resources simply do not exist to solve all these problems, with the result that a scarce resource base has been stretched over an impossibly diverse range of implementation processes.

This has at least four consequences:

It heightens awareness of problems amongst education practitioners, leaving them feeling increasingly concerned about the scale of educational problems and increasingly powerless to solve any of these problems. This occurs not only because education policy raises awareness about specific problems, but also because it places responsibility on these practitioners for implementing policy. Thus, policy commitments are not only commitments on the part of government, but also set the direction for all members of the system for which the policy is intended. The burden simply becomes too great for people to bear. Thus, even those fully committed to educational change and provision of high quality education lose focus and the will to continue the good work they are doing.

It spreads resources – human and financial – across many problem-solving exercises, with the result that very few problems ever actually get solved in a sustainable way. Because people are working frantically to solve so many problems in education and implement so many new systems, success is very rarely achieved. Not only does this lead to massive loss of productivity, as these efforts and activities are spread so wide that they very seldom lead to results, it also fosters disillusionment amongst those who perceive there to be no progress in educational delivery. This helps to explain why the process of breaking the cycle described in the previous section has not occurred. In the face of so many problems, we tend to lose focus, which in turn inhibits our capacity to act on anything.

It erodes opportunities for professional development. A feature of the South African education sector is that a small number of skilled people are responsible for the bulk of work in that sector, most of whom are working unusually long hours simply to deal with their workload. This workload proliferates as policy seeks to tackle more and more educational problems. As policy proliferates, the opportunities available for these skilled people to support the professional development of others – which, in whatever form and structure such professional development takes place, remains the only way to build the capacity of other people and the country as a whole – is eroded. This is a very dangerous self-reinforcing cycle, as well as a major threat to meaningful affirmative action aimed at redressing racial inequities in the country.

Strategies to harness ICTs effectively are generally moved to the bottom of priority lists by default. This is not because decision-makers do not appreciate the importance of such strategies, but rather because, in the face of so many pressing short-term problems, it becomes difficult to find time and mental space to engage with the complexities surrounding effective integration of ICTs into national education systems. We wish to stress that we are not intimating that there are no strategies to integrate ICTs into education, but rather that urgency prevents these strategies from being conceptualized and implemented effectively. We believe this is at least one key reason why so many ICT-related projects focus almost exclusively on the somewhat easier, but on its own, futile task of purchasing and installing ICT infrastructure.

Policy as the Response to Educational Problems

Another feature has contributed to the policy landscape we described above, and that is a tendency, when identifying an educational problem of any kind, to want to develop a policy solution to it. Obviously, this leads to proliferation of policy instruments. As importantly, many of these policy instruments are developed with only the problem they seek to solve in mind, thus leading to the danger that they might create tensions with existing policy positions. For example, this has become a particular issue in the area of schooling, which is now split across two policy implementation areas, GET and FET. The result has been a sense of confusion about the relative status of different policy pronouncements pertaining to these different areas and how these pronouncements affect a sector undergoing rapid transformation.

More importantly, though, they leave the problem identified unsolved, as policy only sets a framework for solving problems, it does not solve the problems in itself. Here, we are not intending to suggest that all policy falls into this category; indeed, much of South Africa’s education policy has been a critical element of education transformation. We do, however, believe that (a) there is, in some circles, a mistaken belief that policy actually solves problems and (b) some policy delves into operational issues, for which practical solutions, rather than policy pronouncements would be more appropriate.

There is a real danger that response to the kinds of challenges presented by ICT use might follow this kind of pattern. A simple example of this might be to establish a policy pronouncement on the importance of integrating data warehouses into institutional and national decision-making systems, when actually an implementation strategy is all that is needed. A more worrying example of such policy might be to prevent institutions that have already made developments in these areas from being allowed to continue this work unheeded, because it is felt that they are gaining ‘unfair’ advantages over other institutions. This type of thinking only erodes the capacity of the entire system, without making any meaningful contribution to building the capacity of historically disadvantaged institutions. In this example, a more sensible strategy would be to work proactively to share the benefits of lessons of successful application of ICTs in supporting management decisions across the whole system, an activity that requires no policy pronouncements to be successfully implemented. Given the nature of the field, it is also an activity for which funding can easily be secured. Its success, however, does depend entirely on the creativity and passion of the people responsible for implementing it, so innovative strategies for securing the right human resources would need to be found.

Solving the Policy Proliferation Cycle

In summary, then, we believe that South Africa’s policy implementation environment is caught in a self-reinforcing cycle that looks something as follows:

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It is important to stress that the above diagram is not intended to describe the only possible systemic cycle for policy development, it simply outlines current cycles. This is important because we are not suggesting that policy is problematic per se, only when it contributes to the above self-reinforcing cycle. In South Africa, this has emerged in large part not because the policy framework itself is problematic, but rather because the timeframes for its implementation – set in acknowledgement of the urgency of the problems it seeks to resolve – have created impossible demands on the system and its human resources.

As we have outlined above, proliferation of policy and regulation, as well as of the structures established to implement them, poses serious risks to the capacity of the higher education system to administer itself effectively and to cope with growing competition from different sources. It also undermines the possibility of being able to harness ICT applications effectively in support of these goals. However, we have also acknowledged that each individual policy and/or regulatory instrument in itself is not the cause of the problem. Many of these instruments are based on sound thinking and good ideas. Of course, the intuitive solution to problems pertaining to the size and shape of higher education is to regulate this more closely. We believe, however, that this would perpetuate the cycles described above. Often, the most appropriate solution to problems of this nature is to take a counter-intuitive measure, which the Size and Shape Task Team is ideally placed to recommend. Below we provide some ideas of what this might entail.

Too Many Education Policy Structures

A key consequence of the above-described policy landscape has been proliferation of policy implementation structures. By this, we refer to agencies or units that have been established with the specific intention of giving practical weight to a policy position. Possibly the most central policy implementation structures in South African currently are those related to the National Qualifications Framework and to the Skills Development Act, such as the South African Qualifications Authority, National Standards Bodies, Education and Training Quality Assurers, Standards Generating Bodies, and Sector Education and Training Authorities. There are, however, many others, at both national and provincial level, some of which have been established since 1994, others of which are a legacy of the apartheid education system.

The problem, simply stated, is that there are too many policy implementation structures pertaining to South African education, both in terms of the conceptual and bureaucratic complexity that each adds to the system and in terms of the resource requirements of implementing each successfully. Most policy implementation structures, when viewed on their own, have well considered rationales and reasons underlying their establishment. Taken together, however, they are placing too great a strain on the systems they are intended to serve. South Africa simply cannot afford to have such a major percentage of its available human resource involved in establishing and administering policy frameworks, given that this moves people away from the day-to-day implementation of education itself.

Further, the system as a whole is simply not prepared for the level of complexity demanded by many of these policy frameworks. Many of these systems are based on highly complex educational concepts, difficult enough to implement in a single programme or institution let alone an entire national system. Further, South Africa has drawn strongly on systems being put in place in developed countries, where the conceptual complexity embedded in policy implementation systems has evolved over many years in systems that have had the benefit of reasonably lengthy political and social stability. Although most of these concepts make educational sense, their conversion into national policy implementation systems over only a few years does not. Again, its impact is to overburden the limited resources in that system.

Hard as it may be to do, therefore, we believe it is necessary to take hard political decisions to slow down – or even halt – certain policy implementation processes, as they are creating unprecedented demands on the country’s public education systems, demands which those systems simply cannot meet. The reader will note that we have avoided any intimation thus far of which policy structures should be viewed as higher or lower priority, which should be maintained and which either frozen or dismantled. This is not because we do not have opinions of the priorities, but because they will have to be established through political processes and specific critical review processes (such as the one currently being undertaken for on how best to manage the size and shape of higher education). It would be unhelpful to preempt these processes by suggesting which policy structures should be dismantled to create additional space for successful implementation of those that remain.

At a high level, though, decisions have to be taken to halt or significantly slow the pace of certain policy implementation processes, with a view to giving the education system additional space to solve a small number of fundamental problems thoroughly and sustainably. This decision-making process will have to include decisions to dismantle – or temporarily freeze – identified policy implementation structures to create more distinctly phased implementation of policy frameworks. This raises a real concern for the Higher Education Size and Shape Task Team, as the proposals contained in its discussion document are likely, if anything, to add even more structures and policy processes to the existing system.

Too Many Regulations

Flexibility is becoming increasingly important as education systems are becoming expected to serve an ever-growing diversity of needs and target groups of learners. It is also fundamental to harnessing ICTs to support education systems effectively, as integration of ICTs into systems inevitably creates ongoing pressures for change to the structures of those systems. The more complex policies and procedures become, the less flexible they become and the less flexibility they allow in the operations of people and organizations governed by those policies and procedures. There is also a serious risk that, by creating regulatory frameworks that are too complicated to be administered effectively, one opens the door to serious subversion of the system, as rapid growth in ‘fly-by-night’ education has demonstrated. The simpler policy and regulatory frameworks are, the better, both in terms of flexibility and quality assurance.

South African policy seeks to regulate far too many aspects of education in its efforts to assure quality and expand the size of the system. This regulatory framework is becoming highly constrictive, and is also significantly too complicated to be administered effectively, particularly given the country’s human resource constraints. While the intention of most of this regulatory framework has been to improve quality, it is instead opening huge spaces for poor quality education practices, because regulatory frameworks are too complex to be administered effectively.

At a high level, decisions have to be taken to massively simplify regulation of education, so that it can focus on ensuring that a few basic aspects of education are implemented effectively and accountably. These decisions should involve focusing attention first on ensuring that money allocated to different education functions is spent on those functions, rather than on cross-subsidizing other practices. Once accountability in this area has been significantly improved, it will become possible to add other regulatory layers that focus on building quality and ensuring better planning.

Policy Implementation

South African education is faced with an additional problem related to policy implementation. South Africans have grown extraordinarily accustomed to heavy-handed regulation as a norm for policy implementation, a legacy of a society run as a police state for many years. Unfortunately, though, while the police state has been dismantled, the underlying social desire to regulate all aspects of life has proven harder to abandon. This becomes clear if one attempts to take a bird’s-eye view of education policy. While each individual policy instrument appears reasonable in its own right, their sum is a highly complex, detailed set of regulations that seeks to cover almost every aspect and detail of education implementation. While there is no evidence that any individual piece of policy has sought to become controlling in this way, it is becoming clear that the complete framework ends up attempting to ensure quality by controlling every aspect of education implementation.

This problem has been massively exacerbated by the agencies responsible for implementation of policy, which are still very much driven by this mindset of excessive regulation. Many of these agencies are still almost the same as those responsible for administering apartheid education, but even many new agencies staffed by people who had nothing to do with apartheid education are driven by this mindset (showing how deeply embedded the apartheid system has become in all South Africans). The result of this has been totally unexpected proliferation of administrative bureaucracy that significantly burdens education practitioners at several levels throughout the system. Thus, while the policy framework itself reflects many changes from that which governed apartheid education, its implementation is still very reminiscent of apartheid education systems. This has stifled individual innovation and creativity, as well as perpetuating a mindset in which individuals assume little or no responsibility for their own actions, instead holding ‘higher authorities’ accountable for problems in the system. The current policy implementation environment still encourages this culture of non-accountability, precisely because it seeks to provide detailed regulation of almost every aspect of education implementation, rather than a simple regulatory framework that focuses on ensuring accountability in only a few critical areas of implementation. We regard this as essential not because we believe that all responsibility should be decentralized, but rather because we believe that, when central agencies seek to control all aspects of education provision, the systems of accountability will become too complicated to monitor effectively. Hence, we propose reducing the number of areas in which this accountability to central authorities is expected, so that these areas can be effectively monitored and improved.

It is important to stress that, in making these comments, we do not intend to advocate decentralization of authority. There are critical roles for central agencies to play in ensuring quality of education provision. We are, however, suggesting that the number of areas and elements of education provision that need to be centrally regulated is far fewer than those currently being regulated. Attempts to regulate too many aspects of education implementation make it impossible to regulate anything effectively, as resource constraints and the complexity of detailed regulatory frameworks will derail such efforts. We do believe that regulation is important, but are arguing that there need to be only a few, simple and clear indicators of quality that ensure accountability. They should focus on fewer aspects of quality, and ensure that they are met. Implementation of such regulatory frameworks should remain the responsibility of central government agencies.

Further, it is important to differentiate between regulation and support. Regulations set rules that people must follow or face legal action of some kind, while support creates no such obligations. Detailed support should not be confused with a detailed regulatory framework, as it creates no expectations that people must use the support services offered or make changes because of them. It aims simply to create an increasingly supportive education environment. The draft paper of the Size and Shape Task Team is an interesting example in this regard, as it reflects an attempt to use regulation to establish the boundaries of institutional operations, rather than seeking to work with individual institutions on a case-by-case basis to support their own development of realistic missions.

Policy Implementation and ICTs

Throughout this paper, we have stressed that integration of ICTs into higher education is largely uncharted territory, and that the only meaningful way to learn how best to manage this integration is to support well-planned exploration and develop a system where lessons learned from such exploration is systematically integrated into new projects (appendix one details many lessons already learned from integration of technologies into education environments). We have also argued that this iterative process is one that the South African higher education system cannot ignore, as to do so will only render the system as a whole less competitive and more vulnerable to the vagaries of global trends in educational ICT use.

Unfortunately, however, a regulatory environment such as that described above is not conducive to such exploration, nor is a policy environment in which new policy instruments are continually overlaid onto existing policy. Such environments simply introduce too many inflexibilities and bureaucratic requirements to enable the benefits of such exploration to filter through into the system.

Why is This Relevant to Use of ICTs?

Throughout our analysis of the policy environment, we have attempted to include observations that highlight how these problems affect the integration of relevant and effective ICTs into the higher education system. In summary, though, there is a real danger that attempts to regulate the size and shape of higher education may simply become another ‘sophisticated’ educational layer or controlling regulatory framework to South African policy implementation, adding further strain to an already overly complicated policy environment. We have noted similar trends with concern around the implementation of outcomes-based education (where the ever-growing diversity of concepts and high-level educational ideas has made policy unintelligible to the average educator).

In the context of this paper, it is a matter of particular concern that attempts to deal effectively with the challenges posed by ICTs could further exacerbate the above trends. As we have noted, ICTs introduce significant new opportunities for organizing and providing education (more of which are described in more detail in the following section), and there is little doubt that current policy frameworks do not provide an adequate framework for regulating some of the changes they facilitate or of which they are part. The most notable examples in this regard are probably:

Growth of distance education practices at traditionally contact institutions (which usually involves ICT applications, even if only at the level of making it easier to produce printed materials and develop administrative systems for larger numbers of students);

Provision of education programmes by international providers, particularly those simply offering web-based courses without establishing any physical presence in the country;

Growing involvement of the private sector in higher education provision, and increased potential for public-private partnerships in higher education.

One response to these types of challenges, as well as many others that will no doubt emerge, would be to establish new policy and regulatory frameworks for each of these areas. For example, in the following section we describe weaknesses inherent in the traditional distinction between distance and contact education, one of which is that integration of ICTs into teaching and learning environments has made the notion of distance increasingly difficult to interpret because it now covers so much variance of education practice. This also explodes the traditional notion that ‘distance education’ is cheaper than ‘contact education’, although this notion still forms the basis of national funding formulae. In terms of the above, the danger would be realized if a new policy framework to govern ‘ICT-based education’ were developed, while leaving the existing policy frameworks for governing contact and distance education untouched.

As we have noted above, though, we believe that South Africa is already straining under the weight of too many policy frameworks and structures. It is essential that attempts to regulate the way in which ICTs are used in education focus first on resolving these problems. Thus, in the example above, a better solution would be to create a single, streamlined policy framework covering all educational delivery strategies – focused more closely on systemic outputs and how to assure their quality and financing mechanisms.

There is, of course, another dimension to the problem. This is that the growing policy complexity described above adds growing burdens to the country’s management information systems, as it demands growing amounts of statistical data about more and more areas of education provision (the data requirements generated by SAQA is a good example of this). As these demands grow, the possibility for obtaining better management information is also compromised, as it becomes progressively harder to maintain increasingly complicated ICT applications and systems. The creative process of developing new ICT applications to support effective strategic decision-making depends on not overburdening existing ICT systems in this kind of way. Consequently, another benefit of streamlining policy and regulation will be that it contributes to breaking the decision-making systems cycle outlined above. This is because management information requirements at national level can also then be streamlined, creating a cascading effect through the system, as each management information system at different levels in higher education will have fewer demands placed on it from higher-level systems, enabling sleeker design and more attention to functionality that the system provides for the level at which it is operating.

Some Practical Applications

ICTs and Decision-Making

Above we have described some of the more obvious trends emerging from growing ICT use around the world, primarily in the form of the challenges they pose to South Africa’s higher education system. Before we attempt to indicate how these challenges can most effectively be met, it is useful to give further illustration of systemic cycles in operation. This is presented not as research fact (as we have noted above, this is simply not possible in this field), but as potential scenarios that we believe policy makers should actively seek to combat.

A key development in ICT applications has been growing use of electronic management information systems to inform strategic decision-making. This application has grown fastest in the private sector, as people have sought to leverage value out of the databases that they have developed to support their day-to-day operations. Most recently, investments have gone into building data warehousing systems,which extract data from these operational systems and convert it into analytical reports that can inform strategic decisions. As these data warehouses become more sophisticated and are implemented for longer periods, they also permit more detailed historical analysis and comparison of data, also with a view to supporting decision-making.

Thus, there is major potential to use ICT applications to support the creation of self-improving systems. This is because well-designed management information systems can make it easier for system managers to identify emerging trends, to monitor historical shifts, and to gauge the impact of changes much more quickly. These types of functionality make it easier to analyse weaknesses in decisions that have been taken and to change strategic direction based on this analysis. In part at least, this helps to explain why ICTs have led to growing perceptions of rapid change.

Obviously, the success of systems of these kinds depends entirely on how well they have been designed and the quality of the data that goes into those systems. As a global trend, however, it is fair to suggest that the effectiveness of these kinds of operations is generally improving where they exist, and, as a broad trend, ensuring that decisions are based on more accurate information. It is not unreasonable to speculate that systems which develop and harness these applications most effectively stand to make the quickest improvements in their operations, while those that do not will tend to remain the most static, least responsive to any change, and hence the least competitive.

From this perspective, it becomes clear that deploying electronic management information systems to support strategic decision-making has serious potential to create the following dangerous self-reinforcing cycle.

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The above cycle provides a partial explanation for why ICTs might be accentuating disparities between rich and poor, as better resourced systems are generally (although not always) better equipped with the necessary infrastructure and expertise to implement such self-improving systems. More importantly, though, the above cycle suggests that the better a system functions, the better resourced it will tend to become. While such an explanation is obviously not a complete explanation for why any given system will function effectively and become better resourced, it does provide clear direction on how it can become possible to break the cycles that entrench and extend social disparities.

As we have noted earlier, ICT applications are only as effective as the creativity of the people who design them. So, spending large sums of money on ICT infrastructure and even on building applications provides no guarantee of effectiveness, it only adds more of the conditions necessary for success. Unless these are being harnessed effectively, adding more of them will have no new impact. Conversely, with creativity, it is possible to begin building ICT applications that can have notable effects with limited budgets, provided minimum barriers to entry have been met (and we would argue that the ICT infrastructure in South Africa, as well as the skills base, meets these minimum barriers to entry). So the key to breaking the above cycle is to develop clear vision on how ICT applications could be deployed to support strategic decision-making and to begin building and implementing these applications.

There is, however, a danger implicit in this, and that is the desire to find short cuts for building and implementing ICT applications that facilitate the emergence of better systems. This is that, particularly in resource-scarce environments, it is always tempting to ‘borrow’ the best ideas and applications from well-functioning systems as a short-cut to solving the problems raised above. Unfortunately, this logic omits the reality that well-functioning systems function well precisely because they are designed for the context in which they function. ICT applications supporting such systems inevitably also work successfully because they are designed specifically to support such systems. Thus, transporting applications from one system to another is not a meaningful strategy for breaking the above cycle. Such applications have to be designed specifically for the context in which they will be used (although it will, then, of course, be possible to integrate specific tools and components of other applications into this overall design). Again, a clear vision of how the applications will improve decision-making is critical.

There are significant opportunities for doing this successfully in this country, but these do not yet appear to have been taken yet. The most obvious symptom of this is the difficulty the country still faces in generating data from Education Management Information Systems about statistical trends in the system. As we have noted, South Africa has the necessary infrastructure and skills to harness ICTs to support more effective strategic decision-making, but still lacks the clear vision of how to deploy these effectively. This is partly because many of the decision-makers responsible for ICT-related decisions pertaining to South African higher education lack any real vision of how the technologies could be deployed more imaginatively. International scarcity of ICT-related skills has also left many institutional IT departments and government EMIS units severely depleted. It also does not help that one software company holds a virtual monopoly in provision of management information systems to South African universities and technikons, thus providing little motivation for creativity coming from outsourcing arrangements.

Supporting Management and Administration

If senior management is not functioning effectively, this significantly complicates the challenge of providing high quality education. In such examples, there is a strong case to be made for restructuring and improving senior management – and building mechanisms to ensure its accountability, both upwards and to its employees – before pouring large quantities of funding into training of middle- and lower level employees in an education system. In terms of chronology – many interventions aimed at improving education implementation will be wasted until management problems and weaknesses are solved.

There are strong links between management and administration, but the two should not be confused. Effective management does not necessarily lead to efficient administration, particularly if that management is working in an environment that demands a range of unnecessary and laborious administrative functions to be undertaken to fulfil the requirements of central bureaucracies. Management at higher education institutions can also be supported by strategic investments focusing on streamlining and simplifying administration.

In both cases, we believe that there are very strong cases to be made for using ICTs to support the development of more effective management and administration of higher education, using the kinds of ideas we have presented in the previous section. As an aside, it is probably worth noting that any attempt to restructure the size and shape of higher education – no matter what recommendations it contains – will be doomed to failure unless these ideas are successfully implemented. This is because implementation of policy in areas such as this inevitably has a range of unintended consequences. The effectiveness of any policy in forging change is constrained by the fact that policy is implemented in a social context, and human behaviour is unpredictable. Moreover, where policy interfaces with reality, in real contexts, there are real interests at stake. The way in which human beings and institutions respond to policy where their interest are at stake is a very real issue that policy-makers have to take into account. Further, whereas there is a clear limit to the scope of specific policy, the space in which that policy is implemented is often shared with other systems and policy. These systems interface and overlap with each other. Finally, the relationship between policy and time is important. On the one hand, the consequences of policy interventions often only become apparent after a long period of time has elapsed. On the other, policy is developed as a response to a system as it is at a particular time. If the system changes but the policy remains, it is doubtful whether the intended outcomes will be achieved.

Effective management information reports and historical snapshots of key trends captured in analytical reports can be used to manage these kinds of problems, and to shift implementation strategies as context changes. Using these kinds of functions, it will also be easier to target problem areas in the system and focus efforts on getting these functioning effectively, rather than implementing blanket solutions to perceived problems.

Regretfully, however, these types of suggestions cannot be de-linked from the overarching point about management and administration. As there is no point in introducing elaborate restructuring of systems where management is not equipped to deal with the implications of such restructuring, there is equally no point in attempting to integrate more effective management information systems into higher education at national and institutional level unless this happens as part of a broader process of developing the system’s overall management capacity. Thus, while ICT applications can undoubtedly contribute to solving key administrative and management problems, there introduction can also run the risk of perpetuating those problems because of the way they are introduced. This is not a Catch-22 situation; it simply requires creative implementation strategies, realistic timeframes, and a supportive approach from national level.

ICTs and Communication

Free flow of information is a cornerstone of any successful democracy. It is also essential to improving the efficiency and effectiveness of any system, particularly systems of the scale of those responsible for higher education in South Africa. The best policy documents in the world have no value if they are not understood and their visions shared by those responsible for their implementation. In this regard, sharing information from the centre to local implementation sites is not sufficient. Cheap, speedy mechanisms for communication, problem-sharing, and discussion are fundamental to building shared understanding and ownership of policy visions. Education transformation becomes almost impossible if two-way communication is not reliable and speedy, if people at different levels in the system feel excluded from the flow of information or unable to contribute to or question it. It will be thwarted at every turn if people at these different levels then use the information they receive as a strategy for consolidating their own little education empires.

Possibly most worrying is problems around communication at national and provincial levels. There are two notable trends in this regard. First, many bureaucrats, themselves confused by the bewildering array of new terms and concepts pervading current policy, have projected this confusion onto those constituencies they are meant to be serving. Thus, when real understanding of the underlying educational meaning of these terms is absent, people revert to literal definitions of different terms, using these to ‘explain’ policy to those with whom they engage. This problem is widespread, and severely retarding effective education implementation.

Second, when communication systems are not working effectively and allowing free flow of information, the possibility of people using information as a strategy for maintaining ‘territorial’ power bases is massively increased. Many people in positions of power deliberately use information as a strategy for maintaining a perceived power base. Obviously, this problem is neither limited to education nor to South Africa. However, territorialism of function, both within the Department of Education and between the Department of Education and other government departments remains a major impediment to effective implementation. Current power struggles existing in education between directorates, between national and provincial competencies, and between the Department of Education and other government departments are negatively affecting development and attainment of a common vision and purpose. We are not intending here to suggest that this problem is recent. On the contrary, territorialism was a key feature of education structures governing apartheid education. However, unfortunately little progress has been made in the last five years towards solving this problem, which has now become deeply entrenched within the new education system. Such territorialism becomes much harder to sustain where communication systems allow free two-way flow of information.

Equally regretfully, such territorialism is equally rife within and between higher education institutions. There are at least three reasons for this:

Poor internal management. Most higher education institutions we have worked with are staffed by people who feel bewildered and isolated from the changes taking pace nationally and restructuring taking place institutionally because they are not part of ongoing communication around these changes. Such problems could easily be resolved by establishing more effective communication systems, stimulating flow of easy-to-understand information on changes from management to employees and channels of communication to discuss concerns and misunderstanding.

Staff members function as individuals, not as part of an organization. This problem is particularly pervasive in universities, where the ethic of the academic working in isolation is still dominant. While there are no doubt certain types of work where this model is still most effective, as a strategy for creating a coherent, sustainable organization able to compete effectively with organizations from increasingly diverse sectors, it is disastrous. Thus, building an ethic of information-sharing and communication remains a major challenge for higher education systems.

Public higher education systems are still primarily competing with each other. Above, we have noted many forms of competition that we believe pose very real threats to higher education, and all of them have been from outside the public higher education system. We have also argued that such competition cannot be curtailed through regulation, as it will simply mutate to bypass that regulation. Regretfully, though, public higher education institutions still see themselves as primarily competing with one another – for students and research grants – with the result that the system as a whole is becoming progressively less competitive. At least one reason for this is that it increases inter-institutional suspicions, hence minimizing flow of information between institutions.

At the same time as most current communication systems are not efficient enough, they are also very expensive, relying primarily as they do on physical circulation of large quantities of paper, much of which never reaches its intended destination. Worse, these paper-based systems rely heavily on the goodwill of a massive human chain for communication between the centre and local sites of activity to work effectively. When taken in combination with problems of territorialism, this spells disaster for effective communication.

For these reasons, establishment and maintenance of cheap, reliable systems of communication should be identified as a primary priority for the Ministry of Education. Measurable goals should be established to ensure that progress is made quickly in this regard, with clear rewards and penalties for not achieving agreed goals. These could focus on many areas, but should certainly include strategic investments in use of e-mail should be made to facilitate communication. Already, most key players in management and administration in South African higher education have access to e-mail facilities, so these investments should not be limited to widening infrastructure. They could include distribution of regular, open subscription e-mail newsletters targeting different themes (as well as active recruitment of e-mail addresses to be added to these lists, as even South Africans with e-mail addresses are not yet particularly proactive in searching out information). They could also include establishment of chat forums to explain and discuss key policy positions. Support could also be provided to individual institutions to help them streamline and improve their own communication systems.

They should, however, also incorporate strategic investments in new information technology infrastructure, as well as negotiations with telecommunications providers (Telkom and cellular providers) to widen access to e-mail facilities and make this cheaper and more reliable. These latter investments and negotiations could be undertaken in partnership with the Department of Communication. More detailed ideas are contained in The Feasibility of Establishing a Dedicated Educational Broadcasting Service in South Africa, a policy research document on technological convergence recently completed for the Departments of Education and Communication.

Establishing electronic communication systems is, however, only as useful as the information that flows through those systems. Thus, implementation of strategies to use ICTs to support more effective communication have to be linked to strategies to improve the quality of management information systems, as described above.

Conclusion

This section of the report has focused on ways in which ICT applications affect higher education systems in South Africa. It has attempted to engage with several underlying trends characterizing integration of ICTs into higher education, while also posing several key challenges to policy-makers at national and institutional level. Importantly, it has developed a consistent theme throughout that focuses on the importance of using ICTs to support the development of better quality management information systems. This focus has been deliberate, because discussion about ICT use in education so quickly devolves to micro-level analysis of how these technologies can be used to deliver education to learners. Thinking about ICTs to support teaching and learning is a false starting point, as it assumes effective underlying systems. We have, therefore, attempted to steer the argument in favour of applications of ICTs that seek to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of these systems.

We would argue that this point is not, however, simply about systemic or management issues. At heart, it is, in fact, about the effective implementation of the core functions of higher education. As we noted earlier, for example, we believe that effective use of ICTs in the domain of teaching and learning flows much more easily when systems have already integrated effectives use of ICTs into their managements and internal communication systems. Without this base, use of ICTs to support delivery of education to learners will always be unsustainable. With this in mind, we now turn our attention to ICTs and teaching and learning.

ICTs and Teaching and Learning

As our discussions until now have demonstrated, considerations about the relationship between ICTs and higher education inevitably introduces a range of interrelated themes. Unsurprisingly, therefore, the same problem arises when one considers potential ways in which ICT applications might support teaching and learning. Consequently, we begin not with ICT applications themselves, but rather with an analysis of traditional conceptualizations of education delivery, and of how ICTs, amongst other factors, are making these traditional concepts increasingly irrelevant.

New Frameworks for Understanding Teaching and Learning

The more research SAIDE has conducted in higher education, the harder we have found it to maintain neat categorizations, as these are increasingly containing too divergent a range of education practices to remain relevant. This pertains particularly to the way in which different educational ‘modes of delivery’ have come to be categorized. In historical terms, the concept of ‘modes of delivery’ has been relatively simple to understand, as people have generally tended to differentiate between ‘contact education’ and ‘distance education’ as two readily identifiable modes of delivery. Internationally, this broad distinction began to merge as different institutions moved to establish themselves as ‘dual-mode’ or ‘mixed-mode’ institutions, particularly in the area of higher education. This generally began to happen as traditionally contact institutions introduced distance education programmes for students who were not able to attend their central campus on a full-time basis. In simple terms, then, the concept of modes of delivery covers these three broad institutional types:

Contact education institutions (where students attend face-to-face sessions of different kinds, and these sessions are the primary mechanism for communicating course curriculum);

Distance education institutions (where students and educators are separated by time and/or space, and communication of curriculum takes place primarily through use of educational resources, drawing on different media as necessary); and

Mixed- or dual-mode institutions (where the institution establishes parallel administrative systems to enable it offer both distance and contact education programmes).

‘Distance’ and ‘Contact: An Outdated Dichotomy?

We believe that the concept of ‘modes of delivery’ is based on an historical distinction that has existed in education systems between ‘distance’ and contact’ education. This distinction has been very useful for many years, particularly as it allowed for the establishment of innovative responses to education problems – such as Open Universities and Open Schools – that could be set up and run without waiting for changes in mainstream education systems. This flexibility was important to the success of many distance education institutions around the world, but has also had the unfortunate consequence of establishing two distinct education systems, which have historically operated in parallel and created long-term policy problems. This problem has been compounded recently, as there has been an explosion of education delivery options – stimulated by developments in ICTs – that has made existing policy frameworks, which are built on these two distinct ‘modes of delivery’ increasingly untenable.

In a recent research report, SAIDE examined the growth of distance education at traditionally contact higher education institutions. The different terms used by education providers and the range of practices we described in that report provide some illustrations of the extent of this problem. Our research revealed a wide diversity of practices at traditionally contact public higher education institutions. We believe that, if nothing else, this has demonstrated unequivocally that the traditional dichotomy of ‘distance’ and ‘contact’ education has outlived its usefulness.

For example, distributed lecturing systems using video-conferencing equipment and systems using instructionally designed study guides and decentralized tutorial support both find themselves located within the same category of ‘distance education’, although they bear almost no resemblance in terms of pedagogical approach, technologies used, and their financial implications. This is not to suggest that one is intrinsically better than the other. It simply points to the inadequacy of planning approaches that assume the planning and implementation requirements of both will be adequately met by a common framework called ‘distance education’.

The growth of distance education methods of delivery has been a key feature of education in the 20^th century, a feature which has marked South African education as much as education in any other country in the world. Initially, these methods were developed as distinctly different from contact education, resulting in the establishment of dedicated distance education institutions such as the University of South Africa (UNISA) and Technikon SA. To most people, distance education came to be seen as provision for those people denied access to contact education (either because they cannot afford the latter or because circumstances demand that they study on a part-time basis), and distance education was regarded as a separate educational ‘mode’ and operated through systems that ran parallel to contact education systems.

The examples and case studies found in traditionally contact higher education institutions, however, reflect an ever-growing diversity of education practices being clustered under this ‘catch-all’ phrase of distance education. Furthermore, many education practices using what might historically have been described as distance education methods are not labeled overtly as distance education by their protagonists, either because it has simply not occurred to them to do so or because they are conscious of the threat of seeing their government subsidy reduced. These practices are also being integrated into contact education systems, as the growth in such practices at traditionally contact higher education institutions demonstrates.

Further, awareness is growing that elements of distance education have almost always existed in face-to-face programmes, while educators involved in good quality distance education are increasingly recognizing the importance of different types of face-to-face education as structured elements of their programmes. This trend has rendered rigid distinctions between the two modes of delivery meaningless. Compounding this problem, the growth of ICTs has begun to make the notion of distance difficult to interpret, while creating a number of educationally and financially viable new means of providing education. Many case studies we have explored are incorporating use of such technologies into their offerings, while most higher education institutions are busy with processes of developing strategies to harness ICTs effectively.

In many other research and policy processes, SAIDE has suggested that an appropriate solution to this problem is the conceptual introduction of a planning continuum of education provision. This continuum has, as two imaginary poles, provision only at a distance and provision that is solely face-to-face. The reality is that all education provision exists somewhere on this continuum, but cannot be placed strictly at either pole. A major advantage of this blurring is that education planners can turn from meaningless debates about the relative virtues of particular methods of education provision, to consideration of the nature of learning and the educational value of a course’s structure and content. Educators often end up equating particular methods of education with good quality education, even when these methods are being poorly implemented. The notion of this continuum is free of such premature and unnecessary judgements about quality. We believe it should form the basis of any strategic planning processes undertaken to harness the potential of ICTs in South Africa, and should also guide policy formulation in higher education. It is vital in this context precisely because it can enable planners to remove the baggage of educational models developed for fundamentally different contexts (which continues to dog education interventions in the country), while allowing them to draw on the lessons contained in the implementation of these models. This conceptual shift is vital in changing the structure of higher education systems in South Africa. In particular, it will allow for greater flexibility and open up possibilities of collaboration, both of which are vital to an improvement in educational quality and in the cost-effectiveness of education provision, issues of particular relevance to South African policy-makers currently.

Distance Education and Technology-Enhanced Learning

Regretfully, the simplistic use of terminology outlined above has crept further into the field of educational technology. This new trend, particularly pervasive in American educational debates but now finding its way into South African educational discourse, has been to use ‘distance education’ and ‘educational technology’ interchangeably or even as a single, composite term. The most obvious problem with this is that is simply an illogical inference. Educational technologies are used regularly in face-to-face education environments, whether they be ‘old’ technologies like print or whiteboards or ‘new’ technologies like data projectors or personal computers.

More importantly, though, the use of distance education and educational technology as interchangeable or composite phrases introduces a blurring conflation of the terms, which – at least in many South African education interventions – has led to poor quality strategic planning. In many ways, it is similar to the conceptual integration of open learning and distance education in the United Kingdom and Australia – open and distance learning – which created a real misperception that distance education was intrinsically ‘open’. In the same way, many people in South Africa harnessing educational technologies think they are harnessing the benefits of good quality distance education, when, in most cases, they are simply finding technologically clever ways of replicating traditional, face-to-face education models. Many of these projects have blazed a sad trail of failed educational technology projects (most notably in applications of broadcasting technologies to transmit lecture-style programming), wasting huge amounts of time and money. On the positive side, these experiences have valuable lessons for South Africa, so there is no reason why we need continue repeating many of these costly mistakes.

The key point here is that each education intervention should be planned, implemented, and reviewed on its own merits, rather than forced into simplistic, dichotomous categories (such as ‘distance education’ or ‘face-to-face education’), which set arbitrary and unhelpful constraints. Leading on from this, attempts by South African educators to harness the potential of different technologies to support their education interventions should not automatically be regarded as distance education interventions. Technologies can be applied in a range of ways, to support an almost limitless combination of teaching and learning strategies, and it is essential to keep options as open as possible. This flexibility should form the cornerstone of all education planning processes. South African has a diversity of people with a wide range of educational needs. There is no single teaching and learning model that will equally meet these diverse needs equally well. This point seems obvious, but cannot be stressed strongly enough, particularly given the almost innate human desire to find simple, packaged solutions to complex problems.

Policy Implications

The above discussion is, we believe, not simply of conceptual interest. Specifically, it has three major policy implications, which are linked.

The current funding approach for higher education makes an unreasonable financial distinction between distance education and contact education in calculating subsidy allocations to public universities and technikons. Currently, programmes defined as ‘distance education’ receive two-thirds of the allocations of comparable ‘contact’ programmes. This is problematic for various reasons. First, it assumes comparability in terms of expense of two broad categories of education: ‘contact’ and ‘distance’. Our analysis provides conclusive evidence that – at least – the category of distance education has become too broad to justify this simplistic funding approach. Second, embedded in this distinction is a deeply qualitative assumption that the output of distance education programmes is of less value than that of contact education programmes. While we agree it is critical to establish funding formulae that penalize poor educational practices, we see no evidence to suggest that this funding dichotomy achieves that goal. Further, the extent to which distance – or contact – education programmes reduce per-student costs is entirely dependent on how they are constructed. SAIDE has done extensive financial planning work with higher education institutions, which has demonstrated clearly that the traditional notion of distance education being cheaper is not intrinsically correct. More importantly, it also demonstrates that many attempts to harness the educational potential of ICTs are also not cheaper than traditional face-to-face contact. Thus, there is no basis to this qualitative distinction. Third, this strategy of penalizing broad categories of educational practice has the unfortunate goal of encouraging educators and institutions to misrepresent the nature of their educational processes, for fear of arbitrarily applied financial penalties.

Consequently, we believe that the review of funding formulae for higher education should seek to remove this artificial distinction. This would greatly simplify the way in which institutions are expected to report, and also place the responsibility far more squarely on national strategies to assess the quality of output of all higher education programmes on equal terms, and make judgements about how to make allocations on this basis rather than on artificial and arbitrary categorizations. It would also achieve the important goal of promoting cost-effective exploration of harnessing ICTs to support teaching and learning, as the focus would be on outputs and not on technologies used.

As an extension to this recommendation, we also believe that the above conceptual framework should be slowly integrated into the higher education system’s three-year rolling plan processes. Support should be provided to higher education institutions to enable to cope with the changes implicit in collapsing boundaries between distance and contact education, and the lessons of best practice emerging from this trend shared throughout the system, functions that could be coordinated by the national Department of Education.

The Higher Education Quality Review Committee of the Council on Higher Education should focus on establishing a single, common framework for assessing the quality of output of higher education programmes. This policy issue emerges directly from the above discussion, and is a response to the standard concern often voiced about the needs to ensure the quality of pedagogical approach of distance education programmes, as well as programmes using ICTs in different ways. This theme has emerged almost without fail at traditionally contact higher education institutions where distance education programmes are introduced. While we concur totally with the observation that strategies to ensure the quality of distance education provision are critical, it has been interesting to note how few of the people who voice this concern see the logical inference that such strategies should also seek to ensure the quality of contact education programmes. In 1997, SAIDE developed a set of quality criteria of distance education programmes, which we believed would – with minor adaptation – apply to all educational institutions. Evidence of the extent to which such a framework can indeed apply to all education provision is that the South African Qualifications Authority (SAQA) is currently in the process of incorporating these same guidelines into a single set of quality guidelines for all South African educational providers seeking to register with SAQA.

We believe that it is critical to establish similar frameworks for measuring quality of output and pedagogical approach in higher education. Further, we believe that implementation of such a framework should not simply serve to guide educational providers, but should rather be used to direct public funding to programmes of higher quality of pedagogical approach and output. This framework could operate effectively in an environment where all educational programmes receive funding on the basis of pedagogical approach and output rather than according to an artificial distinction between educational ‘modes’. In making this recommendation, we do not seek to underplay the difficulty of creating and implementing such a framework, but it remains the only sustainable way of directing public funding towards educational programmes of the highest quality and relevance to South African educational requirements. Most importantly, this framework should be used to measure educational quality of all higher education offerings, rather than attempting to set up separate measures for programmes using ICTs. This latter approach unnecessarily complicates education regulation and also creates dangerous inconsistencies in policy approach, which can be easily exploited by those interested only in generating money from poor quality pedagogical practices.

National government should seek to spend a greater proportion of its energies on educating learners about how to choose quality education programmes. A consistent theme in this document has been that attempts to control quality by over-regulating higher education are doomed to failure, because ICTs create so many new opportunities for circumventing these regulatory frameworks. Under these circumstances, the most effective weapon against poor quality education is not trying to outlaw poor practice (which is very time-consuming and ultimately not possible), but rather to focus on educating the ‘consumer’ about how to make the most appropriate choices. Currently, at least part of the reason why poor education practice is able to flourish is because such practice involves large expenditure on marketing. These messages are those most consistently heard by prospective learners, and, in the absence of guidelines advising on how to make effective choices, are very compelling. We believe there would be significant value in running marketing campaigns that market the value of high quality education and that seek to equip learners with tools to help them avoid making poor choices about how to spend their money.

What Are the Applications of ICTs?

Given the issues raised above, it is important to establish how ICTs can most effectively be harnessed to support education. This section focuses on outlining some potential applications for ICTs in South African higher education. It is important to stress that these are simply potential applications. The extent to which these applications are effectively deployed will depend entirely on how technology use is planned and implemented. Poor planning and implementation will lead to poor technology applications. This is critical because so much of the rhetoric on ICT use is imbued with a false logic that the technologies themselves can solve problems. Ultimately, the effectiveness of ICT use in higher education depends entirely on how people use the technologies, not on the intrinsic qualities of the technologies themselves. More detailed discussion of these and related issues is contained in Appendix One.

Delivery of Educational Resources

Beginning with the functionality to provide resources, one of the most immediately obvious strengths of ICT applications in a converging environment is their capacity to provide immediately up-to-date resources to large numbers of educators and learners easily and relatively cheaply (whether one is using the Web or e-mail technologies and regardless of the technologies used to secure bandwidth for data transfer). Changes made to resources can become immediately available to educators and students without incurring major additional distribution costs. Likewise, communication resources, such as tutorial letters, can be distributed more often, thus reducing costs of ongoing communication by education providers. These trends are already becoming increasingly important in a world where curricula no longer change in cycles of five or ten years (or even longer), but need to be adapted and updated continuously.

It should be noted here, however, that the capacity to facilitate quick distribution of resources should not be taken to imply an argument in favour of turning online environments into massive ‘electronic textbooks’ (although regrettably this appears to be how most web course designers tend to use the technology). There is no evidence to suggest that today’s – or tomorrow’s – students are going to be interested in simply reading textbooks on a computer screen. Thus, one needs to plan very carefully how to take advantage of this functionality without simply creating electronic textbooks (which most students are simply likely to print out and read in paper form anyway). It should be stressed here that resource distribution should not be mistaken for education, although it often erroneously is (most often by people who understand education only as an authoritarian process of information transmission from educators to predominantly passive learners).

As an extension of the above strength, ICTs also support use of resources that combine more than one medium. While technical limitations still hamper the use of video resources (unless one is working within a reasonably advanced local or wide area network environment or is harnessing the bandwidth capacity of satellite), the ability to create multimedia resources – combining audio, graphics and images, and text - is a tremendous potential strength.

An additional benefit that ICTs can bring to designers of online learning resources is the huge resource base that resides on the World Wide Web. In itself, this is of negligible educational value, but, if harnessed effectively by educators, it can become a very useful resource. This might happen, for example, through judicious use of links to resources on the Web or by setting learning activities that demand learners to make their own selective use of this resource base. As an extension, it is worth noting that this benefit can extend to course design processes themselves. This resource base can be harnessed to support course design and development itself, regardless of the nature of resources being developed.

Facilitating Communication

The second set of strengths of ICT applications is their capacity to support a range of communication strategies, especially easy asynchronous communication between educator and learner and amongst learners. This is possibly their most important educational advantage, particularly as it opens significant new opportunities for learners to engage with educators, hence supporting changing roles for educators.

Of course, as people who are familiar with the full range of applications of the Internet will know, technologies such as Chat Rooms or Video Conferencing do allow for live, real-time communication as well (subject to limitations of bandwidth). However, the major new strength of e-mail particularly is the capacity to facilitate ongoing communication at times that are suitable to the individuals continuing the conversation. Thus, students can post queries or ideas to educators, who can then respond at later times. Where appropriate, this communication can be extended to include groups of people rather than just individuals. People who have used e-mail and discussion groups for business or research purposes will know the benefits that this brings – as well as the time it can save by focusing discussion – and these benefits apply equally in education. Of course, this is not intended to suggest that such communication can replace face-to-face contact; however, it can be harnessed very effectively for a range of educational purposes.

In terms of education systems, a major component of this strength is the capacity to support the many requirements for communication to ensure the effective management and administration of the system, many aspects of which are currently dysfunctional in South Africa. Cheap, easy, immediate communication opens significant new opportunities for circulating information through education systems (whether the system is a single university or a national higher education system), not least at administrative and management levels. This becomes particularly important in an environment where extensive and rapid change is underway, which is currently the norm in South Africa. Most importantly, cheap communication systems ensure that communication can travel in any direction through a system, rather than simply consisting of communiqu�s from higher levels to lower levels within a system.

Facilitating Interaction in Resources

Combining the above, it becomes apparent that ICTs can provide educators with a range of very interesting opportunities for creating resources that allow learners different levels of interactivity. Of course, this can quite easily be used poorly by educators but it can also lead to the creation of interesting and exciting interaction for learners with educational resources. Again, this is not intended to suggest that such interaction can replace all forms of direct human interaction; however, it can be used to engage learners effectively, creating richer teaching and learning environments. This can be facilitated by creative use of, for example, feedback forms, java applets, pop-up boxes, ‘yes-no’ and multiple-choice responses, and imaginative use of hyperlinks to guide learners through diverse learning pathways.

For example, in a printed resource, activities integrated into texts are usually immediately followed by some discussion of the activity, often discouraging learners from completing the activity. In a web environment, however, one could require some form of response from learners by developing this discussion about an activity as a response to a feedback form (thus requiring learners to submit some thoughts on the activity before seeing the discussion). To discourage thoughtless answers – and to encourage peer interaction – responses could be automatically collated and generated as an HTML page of student responses. Likewise, ‘yes-no’ responses could be used judiciously to guide learners down different, but equally relevant, learning pathways. In this instance, the response is used not to provide right or wrong answers, but rather to solicit information from learners on their particular preferences or concerns.

A requirement for many users is support in using various information services, whether these be primary and secondary source databases, library systems, or the resources themselves. Such services currently most often require direct interaction with the people who offer these support services, but there is a strong case to be made for providing online support services to help users. This would include the development of: intuitive search facilities that are easy to use, but accommodate various levels of complexity in searching; guides on information sources and how to find and store information; electronic library guides; guides to using, accessing, and evaluating resources; support guides on writing assignments or reports; and online examples of interactive learning methods and approaches.

Building and Exploiting Information Bases

In addition to the above, there is a further important trend worth noting. The rapid growth in functionality of Internet technologies opens possibilities for building and exploiting information bases in ways that were simply not possible even two or three years ago. In particular, the following developments are worth noting:

Developments in the digitization of information of all kinds, whether it be text, graphic, audio, or video.

Growing functionality of electronic databases, and particularly allowing people to:

Store any kind of information in digital format, with corresponding capacity to run increasingly sophisticated data queries on information once it is organized into a well-designed management information system; and

Run data queries - and receive the results of these queries – using web browsers, whether across the Internet or secure Intranets.

Exponential growth in the speed of central processing units and storage capacity of computer hard drives, matched with corresponding reductions in the relative prices of this hardware. These developments contribute significantly to functionality of databases, both in terms of quantity of data storage and speed of manipulation of this data.

Rapid developments in cheap electronic communication, more and more aspects of which can increasingly be automated. This is further facilitated by convergence in ICTs, which allows communication such as e-mail or fax to work automatically in tandem with information databases if well designed.

Of course, the above sounds, in many ways, like the marketing jargon of information technology suppliers, elements of which have almost been repeated to the point of clich�. Indeed, such is the speed of communication and effectiveness of information technology marketing that, taken on their own, none of the above points necessarily even sounds particularly innovative, notwithstanding their relative novelty as developments.

Nevertheless, hardly any organizations or systems in South African higher education have yet devised strategies for harnessing these trends effectively to the general benefit of education and social development, indicating clearly that their real potential is not yet well understood. Instead, repetition of rhetorical statements about the developmental potential of ICTs soon starts to ring hollow, raising more questions than they answer. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that introducing the notion of an information base is here intended to provide one practical way in which South Africa can seize the opportunity to take practical advantage of the potential of ICTs. This is essential if we are to work towards reversing current trends for the development of ICTs to entrench or widen the gap between developed and developing countries.

A fundamental shift in the value of information is taking place because of the rapid digitization of information and the consequent ease of its dissemination. Historically, information has been regarded as a product, which people were happy to purchase, to the financial benefit of those social structures that controlled and profited from its production and dissemination. While certain types of information will continue to retain value in this traditional way, the vast bulk of information, once it has been developed or collated, now rapidly loses value. Printed catalogues of information become redundant almost as soon as they are printed because this information changes so quickly. Cheaper and easier reproduction and communication of information constantly reduce the time that ‘privileged’ access to information provides strategic advantage. Access to multiple sources of information via the Internet is making it increasingly difficult to identify the source of new ideas, while the rapidity with which new information can be circulated reduces the time for which it can be regarded as ‘new’.

These changes make it essential to find ways to use information quickly in as many different ways as possible before it loses its value. These need to focus on re-using information in different ways without generating significant additional cost. In order to achieve this, it is necessary to establish effective information systems, which can allow for quick and easy manipulation of information once it has been developed or gathered. It is also advisable from this perspective to incur the minor additional cost of breaking links between gathering or compiling information and communicating it. Although this creates some additional costs initially, these can easily be amortized across the range of options that then become possible for communicating this information or using it to support a diverse range of educational opportunities. In this way, the expense of generating the information can be used much more effectively.

Possibly most importantly, it becomes essential to develop effective strategies for storing information in ways that allow it to be very easily manipulated for future purposes. If information about educational resources, courses, and programmes is stored in a database, it then becomes easily available for future applications. In this way, research can build on growing knowledge bases, rather than repeating basic work already conducted. This can maximize the value of money spent on course design and development or educational research. It can then also – where appropriate - be easily made available via the World Wide Web for access by other researchers in South Africa, thus contributing usefully to developing an effective educational resource and research base in the country. This has the potential spin-off of developing the country’s international reputation as a producer – and not just a consumer – of information.

Another point emerging from the above discussions is that increasingly value lies not in possessing information, but rather in developing the skills and capacity to manipulate it effectively for new applications. This indicates clearly the importance of developing management information systems that allow for cheap, easy, and logical storage and retrieval of information. There is added benefit to creating interfaces to information that enable users to engage with certain types of information themselves with little or no intervention by other people. If a simple web interface is added to such a database, it would be possible for educators and learners to select their own search criteria and extract relevant resources very quickly and at no additional cost to a national education system (or an individual education provider). This simple search level adds tremendous value as an educational resource. It is also very cost-effective, because changes made to the database are reflected automatically via the web interface. The lengthy processes of writing pages in HyperText Markup Language (HTML) are removed, because most pages can be generated automatically from the database

For all the above to work effectively, though, it will be necessary – at both systemic and institutional levels – to invest financial and human resources in:

Establishing the types and combinations of information needed to support teaching and learning environments, target learners, and strategies for making this information accessible to all learners;

Developing appropriate conceptual frameworks for computer-based management information systems; and

Designing electronic database architectures that can be used to organize, store, and allow for multiple uses of information.

We believe that this has some important immediate applications in South African higher education, particularly in terms of building the capacity of certain systems to administer themselves effectively.

Motives for Integrating ICTs into Delivery of Higher Education

With the above applications in mind (and bearing in mind that this list is not exhaustive), we now turn to describing in more detail what has been motivating programme planners and, in some cases, entire institutions to explore and/or develop educational applications of ICTs. The list below is no doubt only partial.

This analysis is important in deepening understanding of the nature of the practices, and also serves to highlight that cost is only one factor amongst many influencing higher education planners at institutional level. It also helps to illustrate that overly simplistic policy distinctions, unnecessary regulatory rigidity, or blanket moratoria on particular practices could as easily stifle important innovative activities as they could prevent poor quality pedagogical practice

It would, of course, be n�ive to believe that the motivations of all educators and education providers using ICTs to support teaching and learning are educationally driven. Some organizations and individuals in South Africa’s education system are using certain ICT-based education methods to increase student numbers and/or income with little or no concern for impact on the quality of that provision.

Likewise, we do not wish to create the impression that all the programmes with which we have engaged in compiling this list have been driven by systematically understood and articulated reasons (or that all have been influenced by all of the reasons provided below). Much of the work we have explored has evolved organically, driven by the enthusiasm and interests of individual academics. Nevertheless, we believe it is important, in reflecting on the effect of such activity, to pull together broader trends that might have influenced or emerged from people’s work. Hence, the motivations outlined below aim to move beyond these simplistic interpretations of motivation to explore other reasons why educators committed to quality of education provision have been implementing such changes.

Exploring new education models. We begin with a perhaps obvious motivation, but one that is also often overlooked in policy debates. This is that, in many cases, educational applications of ICTs have been motivated by an intrinsic interest in exploring what new value ICT use can add to educational environments. In many instances, this exploration is further motivated by specific research questions being pursued by individual academics or academic departments. Such exploration tends still to be most prevalent in – although certainly not limited to – postgraduate courses and can range from simple use of data projectors in lectures to fully-fledged web-based courses and programmes.

Providing access to students who would – either because of work commitments or geographical distance – be unable to participate in traditional, full-time contact education opportunities. This reason helps to explain why so much of this activity (in terms of numbers of programmes rather than numbers of students) has been in the postgraduate domain. The drive has been motivated partly by growing awareness of the importance of lifelong learning and corresponding attempts to respond to market needs. It has also been motivated by dwindling student numbers in some of the more traditional areas of undergraduate education provision, particularly in Arts Faculties, and a corresponding need to find new education markets.

Finding new markets and new income streams. Linked to the above point is the important aspect of finding new education markets. All higher education institutions in South Africa are currently exploring a range of ways to build new markets, as some of the more traditional markets come under threat, either because of their perceived irrelevance in the market place or because of increased competition from traditional and non-traditional sources. Linked to this is a growing perception of dwindling income and concern about the danger of relying so heavily on a single, dominant source of funding (the national fiscus). While evidence appears to suggest that government funding has not dwindled as many people claim, a growing percentage of young, higher education students (the traditional market of higher education) is not able to afford fees. This has motivated some institutions to invest in strategies to capture new markets, and many programme planners are attempting to use ICTs, which allow much greater flexibility in delivery of programmes, to reach these markets.

Responding to international and private competition. As we have noted above, ICT networks have begun to collapse many of the traditional boundaries of operation of different organizations. In education, they have created possibilities for education institutions to offer courses to learners many thousands of miles away, using web-based learning. While many educators protest that quality education under such circumstances is not possible, their concerns are not preventing organizations from trading on their reputations or speed to market to secure new education markets. Many attempts to integrate ICTs into education programmes in South African higher education are, in part at least, an attempt to counter this threat by being able to compete with international providers, as well as private providers moving in this direction. Of course, such attempts are also motivated by the potential spin-off benefit of being able to compete internationally. Thus, attempts to respond to new competitive forces are not simply about protecting South African markets, but also about entering new markets elsewhere in the world.

Building student skills in the use of ICTs. Another major motivation for exploring use of ICTs in education environments has been growing awareness – amongst both educators and learners – that ICT skills will be critical to employment for the foreseeable future. Thus, education programmes that do not provide these basic skills are becoming increasingly unattractive to prospective learners, in this case particularly young learners preparing for the world of work. This has been noted even at policy level, leading to a policy requirement that undergraduate students become ‘information literate’ as part of their studies.

Reducing the per-student costs of education provision. Some exploration of use of ICTs has focused on aiming to reduce the per-student cost of educational provision. In some cases, this has led to development of electronic correspondence courses, where students engage with online ‘study guides’ and then are expected to pass examinations. In others, it has focused on delivering lectures to students electronically, using broadcast technology, and allowing limited two-way communication using telecommunication return paths. There is, as yet, no evidence that emerging models reduce per-student costs unless they also make significant sacrifices in quality. On the contrary, higher education institutions are discovering that delivering high quality education using ICTs usually ends up being more expensive than traditional contact education. This suggests that, for now at least, the previous five reasons for exploring ICTs have more lasting relevance than this final point.

Potential Educational Pitfalls

Of course, as well as creating possibilities, ICTs contain many potential educational pitfalls. Almost inevitably – as with most technologies – most of these are linked to the way in which the technologies might be used (or misused) rather than anything intrinsic in the technologies themselves. The following list outlines some of these pitfalls, which we present here to inject a note of caution into discussions about the potential of these technologies. It is by no means exhaustive. It should also be read in conjunction with our more general list of lessons learned in technology use, provided in the following section.

Potential for poor use. Although this a really obvious sounding observation, it is nevertheless worth reinforcing that there is as much potential for poor use of Internet technologies as any other educational technology. As has been the case with many technological innovations (such as radio and television), there has been a proliferation of rhetoric about the potential of Internet technologies to provide simple solutions to very complicated educational problems, much of which is generated by the marketing strategies of technology vendors. Of course, as the use of these technologies develops, a more sophisticated, critical understanding and rhetoric will emerge. Nevertheless, in the absence of this, it is currently necessary to remember that Internet technologies offer no magical panacea to educational problems, and can thus be used just as poorly as any other technology. As has been suggested above, they can also either function as a catalyst for educational transformation or entrench existing education practices.

Resource design is complicated and time-consuming. A second potential pitfall of Internet technologies is that complexities of resource design and development demand time and high-level skills. This problem becomes particularly acute in environments where human and financial resources are limited, and can be further intensified when poor financial planning leads to heavy expenditure in technological infrastructure that, in turn, absorbs budgets for curriculum and resource design and development. This problem is – almost paradoxically - masked by growing ease of use of different technological applications. For example, it is now very easy to generate HTML pages without learning coding, making it much simpler for people to generate their own web sites. This ease of use can easily mask the complexities of the educational or instructional design that is necessary to create effective web resources. This is reflected in the proliferation of online ‘educational’ material that is little more than reams of text on a screen.

Of course, this problem can be used to advantage if harnessed effectively. This is because these technologies and software applications have lowered financial and skill entry levels for people interested in exploring their educational use, thus enabling well-managed budgets and design processes to invest a greater percentage of expenditure in course design and development. The key to turning this pitfall into a possibility is effective management of resources. It is, however, worth noting that design of online learning resources can be very time-consuming. Discussion with people who have developed better quality resources, as well as consultation of international research, suggest that ratios of at least 150 to 200 hours of design time to each hour of learning time are not unusual.

Confusing rote response with interaction. A key benefit that ICTs have brought to the business world is the ability to automate certain rote tasks (such as management and retrieval of data or delivery of communication). Many of these benefits can be harnessed both in the administration and provision of education. However, they carry with them the potential danger that of confusing rote response with interaction. Some education theorists differentiate between different levels of interaction, with rote response as a very low level of interaction moving up to more sophisticated levels of interaction. While this is perfectly valid, we would argue that rote response and interaction are different processes, the former being designed in ways that can actually impede interaction on the part of learners.

In the use of ICTs and online learning, multiple-choice questions and automated responses are probably the most obvious educational activities that tend to encourage rote response. At a more sophisticated level, design of automated learning pathways that ‘guide’ learners down a single ‘right’ path often also encourage rote response to and simplistic memorization of learning resources. Of course, this is not intended to suggest that there is no place for these education strategies. In certain working environments, memorization of key information may be essential to successful operations. When, however, this approach becomes pervasive within an entire education intervention, it starts to become highly problematic, and is likely to place serious limits on the effectiveness of that intervention.

Effective use requires information literacy skills. One of the features of increasing use of e-mail and the growth of the World Wide Web has been that there is a proliferation of useless information. This raises interesting challenges, and points clearly to the importance of developing effective information literacy skills. Of course, the term ‘information literacy’ is itself the subject of some debate. Darch, Carelse, and Underwood argue that information literacy has two components. The one is a set of skills which enables users to identify their information problems and needs, find information irrespective of source or medium, and critically evaluate and use the information. The other is understanding a domain of knowledge, so that an information user is able to evaluate the significance of information in relation to a problem in that domain.

In a later article (19 May), Darch states that information literacy is not just a new name for something which we have always done. It is more than just a set of skills like being able to access a library catalogue or to understand the limitations of the television news. Darch argues that it implies a self-conscious awareness of the way in which information systems work (including modern electronic systems), of the dynamic link between a particular information need and the sources and channels required to satisfy that need. Developing these types of skills in learners who are going to use online learning environments will be essential to their successful implementation.

User unfamiliarity. Linked to the above point is the difficulty – particularly in South Africa – that most potential users, both educators and learners, are likely to be unfamiliar with Internet technologies. Of course, this depends on the nature and level of the education intervention, but it is a potential pitfall that needs to be factored into conceptualizing the use of such technologies. If one peruses existing online learning resources, it quickly becomes apparent how many assumptions have been made about proficiency of use of the technologies that learners are expected to bring with them. Likewise, strategic decisions to develop online learning strategies are usually taken with little or no reference to the capacity of the educators who will be expected to drive these strategies. Consequently, in designing education interventions using Internet technologies, it is always necessary to take account of the levels of expertise of educators and learners, and to ensure that appropriate levels of capacity are developed as part of the intervention. This, of course, has the spin-off benefit of developing important new skills.

Uncertainty around copyright issues. A minor, but important, point to note is that online learning often raises uncertainty around copyright issues. Although it is debatable as to how long copyright will remain a relevant concept as more and more information is digitized, it is certainly still a reality. Thus, one still needs to be careful about not breaching copyright when developing online learning experiences, particularly if one starts making extensive use of resources that exist on other web sites or that have been gathered through e-mail discussion groups. Issues of intellectual property protection will need to be carefully considered, and appropriate policies developed in concert with similar processes taking place in other social sectors in South Africa and internationally.

Lessons in the Use of ICTs

A critical component of any strategic planning or decision-making process is an understanding of past experiences and the lessons they hold. In the field of educational technology, these experiences provide a clear basis for identifying key issues on which the success of any effort to integrate technologies into educational projects will depend. The purpose of articulating these issues is not to submerge this study in a quagmire of unachievable principles, which effectively prevents action or implementation. Rather, it is an effort to extrapolate essential lessons demonstrated by recent local and international experience in order to ensure that future projects build on this experience rather than repeating costly and educationally pointless exercises.

Although it runs the risk of becoming over-used, a Tony Bates quotation helps to drive the point home:

The history of education is littered with the corpses of technology-based projects that were killed because of the high operating costs, problems of adaptation to local conditions, lack of skilled personnel to operate the technologies, and lack of effectiveness.

Despite the wealth of experiences both locally and from around the world on which this country can draw in planning and implementing technology-enhanced learning, it appears that we are repeating many of the mistakes that have been made in such initiatives. Thus, South Africa does not yet appear to be ‘leapfrogging’ mistakes made around the world as was hoped would happen, but seems rather to be emulating those mistakes. The ideas summarized below (and discussed in detail in appendix one) provide a basis for avoiding certain obvious mistakes and building on various important lessons.

Understand Why Educational Technology Projects Fail

Reasons for educational technology project failures are many and varied, but include the following:

Imposition of inflexible technological choices made without reference to educational need and context;

Lack of investment in integrated curriculum and course design and development processes;

Integrating technologies into programmes based on poor pedagogical practice (a problem especially acute in South Africa where the legacy of fundamental pedagogics is still so strong);

Unexpectedly high operating costs, and a very high percentage of total expenditure on recurrent costs, which militates against achieving economies of scale;

Underestimation of the need for well-developed systems of student support, designed as an integral part of overall courses;

Lack of attention to designing and implementing effective management and administrative systems; and

Paucity of people with the necessary skills and expertise to staff programmes, and a corresponding absence of clear professional development strategies designed to overcome this problem.

Technologically-Driven Educational Solutions do not Work

When technologies fail to deliver solutions to new educational challenges, a key reason for this is often that the technology to be used is identified before a clear understanding of the educational challenges and needs has been developed. This often happens with ICTs, which are often described as ‘new’ technologies, where their ‘newness’ is determined by when they were invented. If this definition of newness is used as a basis for classifying technologies, then it is easy to understand why so many decision-makers fall into the traps identified by South Africa’s Technology-Enhanced Learning Investigation:

In most cases, decisions about what technology to use in the learning environment [are] made on the basis of the technological preference, rather than by determining which technology [is] most suitable for the learning objective.

The reasons for this hurried, unsystematic approach to making decisions are manifold; well planned and executed marketing strategies can easily create unrealistic expectations about new inventions, paradoxically often heightened when the experience of using such inventions for educational purposes is still limited. This can lead to very real political pressure to make investments in such technologies, either at government or institutional level, as decision-makers understandably wish to demonstrate their willingness and ability to stay in touch with the latest trends. Such pressure can be exacerbated when the technology has its own ‘missionaries’, people whose love of the invention and its capacity to perform certain functions generates tremendous enthusiasm and a well-intentioned desire to demonstrate its the technology’s capacity to solve educational problems. Such energy, together with the novelty value of recent inventions, can be very persuasive, especially in South Africa, where the pressure to respond to educational challenges very quickly and in a highly visible way is so great. Unfortunately, the desire to find quick answers often leads to short cuts in planning – for example, cutting out rigorous and systematic processes of clearly identifying educational needs before making decisions – sometimes with disastrous, and very costly, consequences.

The following pointers are, therefore, worth taking into consideration.

Educational principles and issues have to form the foundation of decisions about what technologies to use and how.

Before making any contractual commitment, test the viability of using the particular technology or technologies for the intended educational purposes by exploring its potential in a chosen area with the best available educators

Never take marketing jargon at face value.

Do not get locked into contractual arrangements that force commitment to a particular technological solution for an extended period.

Ensure that the choice of technology does not lead to imbalances in fixed and variable costs.

Ensure that technological resources are affordable and cost-effective.

Regardless of technological choice (often influenced by intersecting educational, financial, social, political, and economic interests), ensure that sufficient time for planning, designing, and developing an effective educational programme is scheduled.

Technologies can Either be Used as a Catalyst for Transformation or as a Mechanism for Maintaining the Status Quo

Educational discussions about the potential role of ICTs have an undeniable ability to generate tremendous interest, enthusiasm, and excitement. If harnessed effectively, there is a distinct possibility that this might be a very powerful catalyst for transforming dominant education practices. This task is sometimes made easier because development and use of ICTs have contributed strongly to eroding myths of the teacher as the source of all knowledge. Unfortunately, though, most uses of ICTs still tend to enhance the role of the traditional teacher, using new gimmicks as ‘high-tech chalk’. The assumption seems to be that the ‘talk and chalk’ approach is still the most effective way of organizing educational opportunities and that a key function of technologies should be either to enable teachers to do this better or to make his or her lecture available to more students at one time.

Using this as a starting point, there seems also to be an unproblematized assumption that use of ICTs is a valuable exercise in itself. In many examples we have examined, there is little questioning of the content being provided using these technologies and of how they could most constructively be used to enhance this provision educationally. There is often very little rigorous effort to match choice of technologies to learning outcomes and processes of courses and programmes. There also seems, in many cases, to be a lack of sophistication in mixing media and technologies to achieve learning objectives.

This points to the importance of ensuring that projects integrating the use of ICTs into higher education seek to create learning environments wherein exploration of educational roles for the technologies available can function as a catalyst for effective educational transformation and for building high quality education. It is also necessary – particularly given the scale of particular educational problems and backlogs – to focus on developing teaching and learning models that can be taken to scale cost-effectively. Many ‘pilot projects’ owe whatever success they have to intervention by enthusiastic individuals – who are also often very good educators – determined to make the pilot succeed. This is laudable, but can establish teaching and learning models that are not workable on a large-scale when this type of individual intervention is unable to compensate for weaknesses in such models.

Finally, it has often been noted that, in general, the development of new technologies is serving to entrench, or even widen, the gap between rich and poor, both between countries and within them. As we have noted, it seems that this trend is one of the most difficult with which South Africa has to deal. In general, people and countries with large resource bases are much better placed to take advantage of the educational benefits arising from using ICTs in teaching and learning than are people and countries with few resources. This is not an easy problem to solve, but clearly we cannot solve it by pretending that it does not exist. Rather, it is a problem that the South African higher education system has to work through in order to ensure that access to ICTs is opened up to marginalized communities in innovative and cost-effective ways. Above all, not tackling the problem head on is, as much as anything else, likely to be an act of perpetuating economic, and educational, marginalization.

High Quality Courses and Learning Resources are Crucial to the Success of Technology-Enhanced Learning Initiatives.

The South African TELI Report makes the observation that:

experience from around the world indicates that introducing technological hardware into education and training is generally the easiest part of the process, and often ends up being the cheapest in the long term. The development of course materials to be used with such technologies, whether they be printed resources, video cassettes, or computer-based resources, is a far more costly and time-consuming process, and is also an ongoing one.

Based on this, it went on to assert that:

The successful introduction of technologies into teaching and learning environments depends on high quality course materials. Unfortunately, however, inadequate attention, time, and money are generally devoted to the design and development of such course materials. In order to change this, it is necessary to redirect significant funds to course design and development processes.

Unfortunately, in many cases where technologies are being used to support or enhance learning, high quality learning materials are conspicuous by their absence. Often, the use of technologies is not accompanied by any materials development processes. This is particularly strange because it seems that this very traditional approach to using technologies to enhance learning adds cost to the teaching and learning process without any particular benefits. A critical lesson to be learned from good distance education practice is the notion that the course, rather than the educator, provides an appropriate learning environment for students. Rather than simply referring to a set of materials, however, the course is the structure of learning that is designed into the materials. It has four basic elements:

Conceptual pathways to command of its knowledge, conceptualizing skills, and practical abilities.

Educational strategies for helping the learner find his or her way through these pathways.

Summative and formative assessment that are integral to the learning process.

Materials and presentation of the course as a whole that excite, engage, and reward the learner. Courses should be designed so as to involve learners actively in their own learning, and should allow learners quick access and clear movement through them. Although there is no need for courses to use advanced technologies, most, but not necessarily all, will make use of a variety of media. Provision should also be made, in the design of courses, for the necessary practical work. In order to be as flexible and open as possible, courses should be organized in modules.

Education is a Process of Engagement Between Two Groups of People; Learners and Educators. If Either is Not Equipped to Engage Effectively, it is Unlikely to Succeed.

Often, in technology-enhanced learning initiatives, people tend to lose sight of the fact that, regardless of the technologies used to support communication or resource provision, education remains – at its most fundamental – a process of engagement between two groups of people: learners and educators. To succeed, educational projects seeking to harness the potential of technologies will have to focus clearly on ensuring that both educators and learners are equipped to engage effectively in the teaching and learning that takes place. It is vital to incorporate clear strategies to ensure that both educators and learners are equipped with the necessary skills, knowledge, and competencies to engage effectively in any educational project using ICTs. Ideally, these strategies should focus also on ensuring that their ability to use the technologies that they come into contact with during a project extends beyond the scope of the project itself.

Integrate Quality Assurance into Projects from the Planning Phase

Internationally, there is growing recognition that one of the most effective ways of ensuring the continual improvement of educational provision is through the establishment of sustainable internal quality assurance mechanisms. Once up and running, these mechanisms can lead to effective self-improving systems within institutions and educational programmes. They can also function as ongoing motivation and professional development for staff. Of course, as with all such mechanisms, there is no guarantee that their implementation will lead to self-improving systems. Nor can such internal mechanisms fulfil all evaluation functions within an institution or programme. Ultimately, success is dependent on the integrity and commitment of the people who implement and participate in quality assurance processes and on their ability to select processes and evaluation strategies appropriate to the context of the institution or programme in which they are working.

Quality assurance focuses on processes and procedures that cannot, in themselves, ensure quality. The standards set, and the notions of quality upon which such standards are based, are crucial. Especially in education, it is dangerous to reduce quality assurance to a mechanistic process, which is not nurtured and challenged by vigorous debate on the aims of education. Although processes and procedures are the focus, these need to be based on a negotiated and dynamic set of values and seen in a particular context. Processes and procedures must be conducive to quality of performance by all involved. They are not controls or judgements external to that performance. They can be viewed as the means by which the members of an institution ensure that it becomes a learning organization. This then prepares the organization for any externally initiated quality evaluation.

A related guideline here concerns the importance of not working in isolation. By linking up with other institutions, organizations and programmes, people can learn a great deal from each other and so avoid mistakes which have already been made. Partnerships between urban and rural institutions are particularly important because of the very different conditions under which learning is taking place, and the varied ways in which technology can enhance learning in those different contexts.

Ensure that Technological Resources are Affordable and Cost-Effective

Sustainability is a major issue in the introduction of resources for learning. This requires careful costing, not only of the purchase of equipment, but also of its security, maintenance, the ongoing acquisition of software, and the training required for educators and learners who are going to use it. Questions of cost-effectiveness are closely related to the quality assurance activities referred to above. Can the impact of the technology be measured and how does this compare with its cost? Are there in fact cheaper and more effective alternatives? Once again, these are complex issues which need to be built into the planning and evaluation process from the start so that the experience gained can be directly related to whether the learning objectives are being achieved in ways that are sustainable in the long term.

Finding the Right Partners

Much has been made recently of the importance of partnership and cooperation in South African education, particularly in a context of limited resources and massive need. Very often, however, the principle of encouraging and fostering partnership and cooperation has been presented unproblematically as something intrinsically ‘good’. Much recent educational experience in South Africa has demonstrated unequivocally, however, that establishing partnerships is no guarantee of better educational provision. On the contrary, a partnership established on weak foundations – and between partners with widely differing initial agendas – is much more likely to create impediments to effective educational provision and lead to resource wastage than organizations working in isolation.

The above observation is not a recommendation for abandoning partnerships. On the contrary, effective use of ICTs depends for its success on a range of carefully-established partnerships. Rather, it points the way to identifying crucial ingredients for successful partnership. Amongst others, these would include:

Building partnerships between organizations and individuals with broadly similar objectives. This does not imply that there is no room for differences of opinion or approach to solving problems. Indeed, accommodating difference effectively within partnerships can create much better education. However, when philosophies or objectives are antithetical, partnership is very unlikely to work well.

Identifying clearly the contributions of each partner - and their capacity to deliver accordingly - before beginning work.

Developing clear, commonly agreed principles for the operation of the partnership and strategies for dealing effectively - without creating hostility - with partners who fail to adhere to these principles. Developing clear, commonly agreed strategies to ask partners to leave or to enable them to withdraw from the partnership. This might be necessary if the partnership comes to deviate too far from a partner’s own objectives or principles. Perhaps more importantly, it may become necessary in the event of non-delivery by one or more partners.

Educational Sustainability

The importance of ensuring sustainability in technology-enhanced learning initiatives is generally well understood, notwithstanding the vast number of such initiatives that fail to achieve this sustainability in practice. Countless technology-enhanced learning initiatives have stumbled into the trap of over-investing in expensive technical infrastructure and woefully underestimating the expenses of investing in course materials design and development and administrative systems design, as well as the recurrent costs of maintaining technological systems in education. Thus, ensuring that projects can achieve long-term financial sustainability is a crucial component of their implementation. In addition, though, we believe that it is important to achieve educational sustainability, that is to ensure that technology-enhanced learning projects stay true to the original educational intentions. Often the route to financial sustainability involves a range of compromises on educational quality and relevance that may make financial sense but are an educational disaster. Thus, we believe that sustainability should not be measured simply in terms of whether or not projects remain affordable – usually the easiest benchmark for sustainability – but also whether or not they are achieving their intended educational objectives. Thus, efforts to achieve educational sustainability will need to be closely allied to quality assurance processes.

Plan for the Development of Appropriate Infrastructural Networks if ICT is to be Used Effectively

This point is concerned with the broader context in which learning occurs. It suggests that the usefulness of technology depends on a host of surrounding factors. Some of these are quite obvious - for example, is electricity available to light classrooms and drive the computers? Is the school or college accessible by road? Some people refer to the need to develop an ‘infrastructural backbone’, especially where electronic equipment is used. For example, telephone lines or wireless telecommunication paths are essential if computers are to be connected to each other or to the Internet through modems. Cellular telephones will operate only if they are in range of the satellite network. Planning the appropriate infrastructural ‘backbone’ for learning environments needs to be done in an integrated manner, involving all relevant policy-makers and implementers from a range of different sectors or government departments.

Other infrastructural issues may not be quite so obvious. For example, are appropriate resources (such as videos and audio tapes) accessible to the educator who wishes to use them in the learning situation? Does the educator have some guidance as to what might work best for his/her purposes? Is it possible for him/her to use the material flexibly, or can it be used in only one way? What happens if the equipment breaks down - is there someone close by whose job it is to repair the equipment and get it going again quickly? And how will the equipment be secured whilst still being accessible when it is required for learning?

Strategic Challenges for the South African Higher Education System

Introduction

This document has presented a series on interlinked arguments that relate to the common theme of ICTs and higher education in South Africa. We have attempted to develop a conceptual and strategic line of thinking that provides a clear platform for understanding how best to harness ICT applications to contribute to creating and maintaining an effective higher education system. In this final section of the document, we attempt to draw this together by summarizing what we consider to be the most pertinent points for the CHE Task Team on the Size and Shape of Higher Education. Although some points may appear generalized and unsubstantiated if read in isolation, we believe that everything below is supported by the arguments developed at length above.0.

The Central Arguments

ICTs themselves have no intrinsic capacity for action, and hence cannot impact on anything. Rather, people all around the world can and do apply ICTs to perform a wide – and growing – range of tasks. However, reflections on the impact of ICT cannot be limited to how ‘we’ use those technologies. The way in which other people, other organizations, other countries use ICTs is as likely to have an impact on us as how we use the technologies. Thus, on the one hand, South African higher education cannot simply behave as if technological developments are not occurring nor can it not respond to the challenges of how to use ICTs effectively, because to do so is to leave the higher education system vulnerable to ways in which other organizations in South Africa and elsewhere in the world are using the technologies to change their patterns of operation.

The long-term impact of ICTs on higher education is still largely a matter of conjecture, and will only really start to become fully clear over the next fifteen to twenty years. This makes it particularly difficult to establish frameworks to regulate the systems into which they are being integrated. Nevertheless, certain trends in ICT use are emerging:

It is allowing for exponential increases in the transfer of data through increasingly globalized communication systems;

ICT networks have significantly expanded the potential for organizations to expand their sphere of operations and influence beyond their traditional geographical boundaries;

It is expanding the range of options available to education planners in terms of the teaching and learning strategies they choose to use, providing an often bewildering array of choices in terms of systems design options, teaching and learning combinations, and strategies for administering and managing education;

Systemically, it is tending to accentuate social disparities between rich and poor;

It is reducing barriers to entry of potential competitors to higher education institutions, by reducing the importance of geographical distance as a barrier, by reducing the overhead and logistical requirements of running education programmes and research agencies, and by expanding cheap access to information resources.

Changing patterns of organizational structures and operations, supported by the ICT trends outlined in point 2, are making it increasingly easier for new players to perform roles previously reserved for higher education institutions and to progressively expand their domains of operation. Many forms of competition pose very real threats to higher education, and all of them are outside the public higher education system. Such competition cannot be curtailed through regulation, as it will simply mutate to bypass that regulation. Regretfully, though, public higher education institutions still see themselves as primarily competing with one another, with the result that the system as a whole is becoming progressively less competitive. Strategies that deal with the effect that ICTs will have on the size and shape of higher education will have to focus specifically on dealing with these external threats.

The first step towards allowing more effective integration of ICTs into higher education is to create simpler and more flexible policy frameworks, rather than developing new policy instruments that are added to an already overly complicated policy environment. The number of areas and elements of education provision that need to be centrally regulated is far fewer than those currently being regulated. Attempts to regulate too many aspects of education implementation make it impossible to regulate anything effectively, as resource constraints and the complexity of detailed regulatory frameworks will derail such efforts. Regulation is important, but there need to be only a few, simple and clear indicators of quality that ensure accountability. They should focus on fewer aspects of quality, and ensure that they are met. It is also important to differentiate between regulation and support. Regulations set rules that people must follow or face legal action of some kind, while support creates no such obligations. Much work currently being done on regulating aspects of higher education provision should shift from regulating education provision to supporting its effective implementation.

Increased flexibility and simplicity of policy frameworks are not important for their own sakes, but because they are necessary prerequisites for meeting the policy challenges outlined in points 1 to 3. Integration of ICTs into systems inevitably creates ongoing pressures for change to the structures and operations of those systems. The more complex policies and procedures become, the less flexible they become and the harder they make it to allow for these shifts.

Any attempts to integrate ICT applications into higher education will depend, for their success, on the vision of those responsible for planning and implementation. Without a clear vision of how the strengths of ICTs can be harnessed and their weaknesses overcome, any initiative will be doomed to failure. This vision needs to be located in a concrete understanding of what the core functions of higher education actually are.

Arguments about how to harness ICTs most effectively to increase access to higher education should start with understanding how these technologies can be used to improve the efficiency of operations of the underlying systems of higher education. This is where the biggest immediate gains can be achieved, as existing ICT infrastructure within most of these systems can easily be harnessed. Successful application of ICTs in improving systemic efficiency and operations can lead to improvements in delivery of all higher education, regardless of what teaching and learning strategies are finally being used to communicate with students. This means that they contain much more persuasive potential for dealing meaningfully with problems of access and redress than using the same technologies to deliver education to disadvantaged students. They also constitute the most useful starting point for dealing with increasingly diverse forms of competition to public higher education. In particular, investments should be made in developing applications that:

Significantly improve the quality of management information systems (at national and institutional level) and the ability to use these systems to support strategic decision-making and policy implementation; and

Contribute to stimulating free flow of information throughout the higher education system.

Point 7 is not simply about systemic or management issues. At heart, it is, in fact about effective implementation of the core functions of higher education. For example, effective use of ICTs in the domain of teaching and learning flows much more easily when systems have already integrated effectives use of ICTs into their managements and internal communication systems. Without this base, use of ICTs to support delivery of education to learners will always be unsustainable.

Each education intervention should be planned and implemented on its own merits, rather than forced into simplistic, dichotomous categories (such as ‘distance education’ or ‘face-to-face education’), which set arbitrary and unhelpful constraints. Technologies can be applied in a range of ways, to support an almost limitless combination of teaching and learning strategies, and it is essential to keep options as open as possible. This flexibility should form the cornerstone of all planning processes. The national policy framework should also be re-designed to support this more flexible approach to planning and implementation of higher education. Contexts of implementation should be understood before making decisions. Where there is a discrepancy between contexts of implementation and technology choices, the choice will either need to be changed or fully articulated strategies developed to change the context of implementation (although in some cases the latter may prove an unrealistic objective).

Within the broad framework provided above, the following roles for ICTs in supporting teaching and learning are worth considering, amongst others:

Delivery of Educational Resources. ICTs can be used to provide immediately up-to-date resources – using one or more media – to large numbers of educators and learners easily and relatively cheaply. Changes made to resources can become immediately available to educators and students without incurring major additional distribution costs. Resource distribution should, however, not be mistaken for education. An additional benefit that ICTs can bring to designers of online learning resources is the huge resource base that resides on the World Wide Web.

Facilitating Communication. ICTs can be used to support a range of communication strategies, especially easy asynchronous communication between educator and learner and amongst learners. Where appropriate, this communication can be extended to include groups of people rather than just individuals. A major component of this strength is the capacity to support the many requirements for communication to ensure the effective management and administration of the system.

Facilitating Interaction in Resources. Combining the above, it becomes ICTs can provide educators with a range of very interesting opportunities for creating resources that allow learners different levels of interactivity. This can lead to the creation of interesting and exciting interaction for learners with educational resources.

Building and Exploiting Information Bases. There are growing possibilities for building and exploiting information bases Possibly most importantly, it becomes essential to develop effective strategies for storing information in ways that allow it to be very easily manipulated for future purposes. Increasingly value lies not in possessing information, but rather in developing the skills and capacity to manipulate it effectively for new applications. This indicates clearly the importance of developing management information systems that allow for cheap, easy, and logical storage and retrieval of information.

Planning processes should seek, wherever possible, to build on past experiences – positive and negative – from South Africa and around the world. These include:

• For any national or institutional planning exercises, a small – but commonly accepted – planning team should be established to drive planning processes. It could be made up of a few individuals selected not to represent key interests, but because of their ability to complete planning tasks effectively. To achieve buy-in effectively, open channels of communication between the planning team and various interested parties should be created, which allow for input from all of these parties before decisions are taken, rather than presenting completed plans.

Maintaining focus on the specific problems that education interventions need to solve is critical to the planning process. This focus is very easily lost, although planners often are unable to see this. Consequently, reflective processes to restore focus should punctuate all stages of planning exercises.

If investments in educational technologies are to make a meaningful and sustainable impact, they will have to be made as part of a broader process of shifting patterns of expenditure on education.

Strategic planning processes will need to manage carefully the expectations and assumptions of competing interested parties, both to ensure that these are balanced constructively and that they do not undermine the implementation of technology-enhanced learning strategies.

• Investments in new technologies should be planned and implemented with a view to ensuring that they function as a catalyst for effecting critical changes. For this to work effectively, the ‘marketing’ of the investment needs to be carefully managed, and perceptions of buy-in by critical players needs to be well publicized.

Given current constraints, strategies need to focus narrowly on solving a few key problems. Ultimately, such a plan, which frames systemic change within much longer time-frames than is currently the norm (say, twenty-five years rather than five years), is likely to have an impact much faster than a plan which tries to solve all problems simultaneously.

There is a need for investment in flexible and sustainable infrastructures that will support educational applications in a variety of contexts.

International technical standards and protocols should be adopted if wastage is to be avoided.

Effective use of ICTs in higher education will depend on establishing effective partnerships. The range of expertise required to use ICTs successfully is simply to great to assume that any single organization or even any single sector houses that expertise. Further, strategic partnerships are a critical element of building new visions of how ICTs can be used to greatest effect, as the creativity they generate inevitably opens new possibilities previously not seen. In this regard, it is also not viable to pretend that public-private partnerships can be avoided. Although there are many reasons to be sceptical of such partnerships and their potential to corrupt the core functions of higher education, effective integration of ICTs into higher education cannot take place without private sector involvement.

Notes

[1] The reports completed by SAIDE on which this paper draws are amongst others:

Communication (1999). The Feasibility of Establishing a Dedicated Educational Broadcasting Service in South Africa. Pretoria, Unpublished Report.

Education (1996). A Distance Education Quality Standards Framework for South Africa. Pretoria, Policy Report.

Education (2000). Open Learning in South African General and Further Education and Training. Pretoria, Policy Report.

SAIDE (1997). The Green Paper on Higher Education: An Open Learning Perspective. Johannesburg, Policy research report.

SAIDE (1998). The Internet, Satellite, and the Professional Development of Educators: Building Appropriate Teaching and Learning Models. Johannesburg, Report Prepared for Orbicom.

SAIDE (1998). The Distance Education Practices of the Wits P & DM Master of Management Programme in Mpumalanga. Johannesburg, Policy Research Report.

SAIDE (1998). The Shoma Education Foundation in Soshanguve. Johannesburg, Policy Research Report.

SAIDE (1999). Educational Technologies: Strategic Choices for SABC Education. Johannesburg, Planning Report.

SAIDE (1999). Satellite Seminar Programme Offered by the University of Stellenbosch Faculty of Dentistry. Johannesburg, Evaluation Report.

SAIDE (1999). Evaluation of the Multimedia Education Group (MEG) 1999 Report. Johannesburg, Unpublished Report.

SAIDE (1999). Use of Information and Communication Technologies at South African Schools: SAIDE Contributions to Research of the UWC EPU. Johannesburg, Evaluation Report.

SAIDE (2000). Distance Education at Traditionally Contact Higher Education Institutions. Johannesburg, Policy Research Report.

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