The role of digital media and learning has often been synonymous with the use of open education resources in formal institutional settings. Further, open and distance learning has been criticized for focusing narrowly on educational objectives, ignoring sociopolitical issues of access and participation by marginalized populations. This study…

Background: IsiXhosa students enrolled for the BEd Foundation Phase qualification at a university in South Africa failed their first year in identified at-risk subjects, namely Mathematics in Education, Language in Education and Computer Literacy. The students stated the reasons for failure as not understanding the concepts and terms of the…

Hypermedia has received increasing attention since the 1980s and this has been followed by an increasing interest in utilizing hypermedia in the domain of education. Many successful projects have been reported. In most cases, students used hypermedia designed environments to search for information and to navigate from one place to another. In this…

South Africa's communication landscape has changed and is still changing because many previously disadvantaged areas have benefitted from the construction of roads, provision of electricity and installation of satellites. As a result, many previously disadvantaged learners have access to digital media in their homes. In this article, we argue that…

This paper is the second in a series of three with a common goal to present a fair OER picture for Sub-Saharan Africa, represented by large-scale studies in three countries: Kenya, Ghana, and South Africa. This paper examines a deliberate selection of four Ghanaian universities with randomly sampled students and lecturers. Distinct questionnaires…

With an increased push to integrate coding and computational literacy in K-12 learning environments, teacher educators will need to consider ways they might support preservice teachers (PSTs). This paper details a tinkering approach used to engage PSTs in thinking computationally as they worked with geometric concepts they will be expected to…

This study examines teachers' perceptions about digital literacy instruction in early elementary school grades (e.g., Kindergarten through grade 2) so as to identify existing obstacles to digital literacy instruction as well as support systems necessary to enhance instruction. Participants (n = 37) included Kindergarten, first, and second grade…

The purpose of the study was to reveal the effect of a course taken through distance education on students' readiness and attitudes. Sequential explanatory design method was used as a research method in which qualitative and quantitative measurements were used in the research. For the quantitative data, a single group pre-test/post-test design was…

This study aims at investigating the effects of Programming Education Planned with TPACK (Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge) Framework on middle school students' learning outputs within the ITS (Informational Technology and Software) course. Although TPACK is known as a teacher training program, this study demonstrates it can be used in…

Adaptive learning technologies hold great promise for improving the reading skills of adults with low literacy, but adults with low literacy skills typically have low computer literacy skills. In order to determine whether adults with low literacy skills would be able to use an intelligent tutoring system for reading comprehension, we adapted a 44…

Digital equity and intercultural education continue to be areas of concern in the emerging knowledge-based society. The digital divide is present across the globe as the result of a complex of factors such as the inequality in: access to hardware and connectivity; autonomy of use; digital and literacy skills; availability of technical and social…

Since our first studies of information and communications technology (ICT) skills and ICT use at universities in 2004, ICT and its use by students has changed greatly. In order to obtain a more detailed picture of ICT skills, we first construct a new instrument to measure the self-perception of ICT skills (49 items) and of ICT use (53 items) by…

With the proliferation of cloud computing for both organizational and educational use, cloud-based collaboration services are transforming how people work in teams. The authors investigated the determinants of the usage of cloud-based collaboration services including teamwork quality, computer self-efficacy, and prior experience, as well as its…

Arguably, the dilemma for many small college libraries is delivering face-to-face library instruction to satellite students without having the resources and/or staff to do so. In order to channel energies to where they are needed most, this institution conducted a survey of its satellite students to determine what their library instruction…

The popular press is rife with examples of how students in the United States and around the globe are learning to program, make, and tinker. The Hour of Code, maker-education, and similar efforts are advocating that more students be exposed to principles found within computer science. We propose an expansion beyond simply teaching computational…