3. OVERVIEW OF THE SLIDES
The next two slides give a general
overview of the trends in instructional
technology in the world and in
Swaziland.
Then there will be slides showcasing all
these instructional technology trends in
general, before I narrow the field down
to Swaziland, and more in particular to
the University of Swaziland and its
Institute of Distance Education.
4. TRENDS IN INSTRUCTIONAL
TECHNOLOGY: GENERAL
Mobile devices as learning tools
Open educational resources
Online learning communities
Virtual learning environments
Social media
MOOCs (Massive Open Online Course) and DOCC
(Distributed Open Collaborative Course)
Cloud computing
SMSs
Simulations, games and virtual realities
5. TRENDS IN INSTRUCTIONAL
TECHNOLOGY: IN SWAZILAND
Mobile devices as learning tools
Open educational resources
Online learning communities
Virtual learning environments
Social media
SMSs
16. IN SWAZILAND, AT THE
UNIVERSITY OF SWAZILAND, AT
THE INSTITUTE OF DISTANCE
EDUCATION
The contextual situation in Swaziland is thus
that instructional technology is still very much
concerned with face-to-face environments and
is only slowly moving to a real distance or even
e-learning environment. This implies that
certain trends are those other countries have
already, long time surpassed.
18. Open educational resources
In Swaziland the trend is only catching
on now. Very few organizations use open
educational resources (except the UN
agencies perhaps). At the University of
Swaziland, in the Institute of Distance
Education, we are trying to create
awareness about these resources.
One of the ways to create this awareness
is through the Open Education Week,
which we first celebrated in 2012.
The following slides give an account of
this day; the notes were extracted from
the IDE Open Education Week Report.
19. Open educational resources
(continued)
UNISWA joins Open Education Week 5-10 March 2012
In the week of 5-10 March 2012, the University of Swaziland,
Institute of Distance Education (IDE) joins individuals and
organisations from around the world in helping to raise
awareness of the open education movement and open
educational resources (OER).
Open Education Week is a global event that seeks to raise
awareness about the benefits of free and open sharing in
education, especially Open Educational Resources (OER). In its
simplest form, the concept of Open Educational Resources (OER)
describes any educational resources that are openly available for
use by educators and students, without an accompanying need to
pay royalties or licence fees. The first open seminar was held in
the new IDE SGL Digital Gateway on the 5th March, 2012. The
theme for the Open Education Week from 5 to 10 March, 2012 is:
Efforts to expand access to education and knowledge.
20. Open Educational Resources
(continued)
Discussion topics and facilitators:
-Open Educational Resources as a catalyst for transformation in
open and distance learning Mrs Shokahle Dlamini
-OER initiatives and libraries Mr John Paul Anbu
-Is there compelling evidence for OER in higher education? Dr
Karen Ferreira-Meyers & Ms Nokuthula Vilakati
Facilitators highlighted key areas as follows:
The genesis of the open education movement; open access
initiatives; open education; history of OER; VUSSC project OER
development processes and outcomes; and worldwide OER
initiatives. Samples of projects and events were featured from
institutions and organizations from around the world, including:
MIT Open Courseware, Virtual University for Small States of the
Commonwealth (VUSSC), African Health OER Network, UK
OpenLearn, OER Textbook, Multimedia Educational Resource for
Online Learning and Teaching (MERLOT), OER search engines and
toolkits for creating, adapting and repurposing OER.
21. Open educational resources
(continued)
Participants then discussed OER a possible way
forward for UNISWA as follows:
►To form a collaboration between the UNISWA Library, IDE
and subject experts in formulating a draft working policy on
OER
►To engage a broad spectrum of university staff to be
involved in the identification, indexing and archiving of OER
►To form a vibrant community of practice to actively
create, identify, market and make good use of quality OER;
and
►To formulate local OER project proposals and explore
business models to support local initiatives to create OER
and to involve many staff members and students
throughout the processes.
22. Online learning communities
In an effort to set up online learning communities, we,
at the Institute of Distance Education, talk about the
importance of learning communities when we meet our
students and when we participate in workshops and
seminars. One such opportunity is our yearly residential
writers’ workshop which we normally hold in June or
July.
We have tried to make it an online learning community
after the COL funded workshops and the most recent
one held in collaboration with SAIDE (South Africa)
which was funded by SADC-CDE.
The trend is there, but it is only emerging. More
awareness needs to be raised on the importance of
these learning communities in an online environment,
even though some of the IDE employees benefit from
them on a personal developmental level.
23. Virtual learning environments
Here, I want to narrow the discussion down to MOODLE, the learning
management system we use. Several articles have been published in
this regard, about MOODLE at UNISWA and at IDE. These are, amongst
others:
2013 FERREIRA-MEYERS, K. and VILAKATI, N. « L’utilisation des TICE au Swaziland - Synthèse des projets,
ressources, défis et avantages », in Adjectif Analyses – Recherches sur les TICE, 6 p.,
http://www.adjectif.net/spip/spip.php?article233.
2012 FERREIRA- MEYERS, K. and NKOSI, J. « Strengthening Literacy: Academic and digital literacy in
competition or in complementarity at the University of Swaziland? » in Pula: Botswana Journal of African
Studies (Special Issue on Literacy). Vol. 26(2).
2012 FERREIRA-MEYERS, K. « Amélie Nothomb : Une Forme de vie (2010) L’autofiction épistolaire », in
Interférences littéraires/Literaire interferenties, n° 9, novembre 2012, pp. 195-
205,http://interferenceslitteraires.be/sites/drupal.arts.kuleuven.be.interferences/files/illi9karenferreiramey
ers.pdf.
2011 FERREIRA-MEYERS, K. and NKOSI, J. « Strengthening literacy: academic and digital literacy in
competition or in complementarity at Uniswa ? », in Conference Proceedings compiled by SERA, Manzini:
Inter Agencies, pp. 253-261.
2010 FERREIRA-MEYERS, K. « L'apprentissage par investigation et les outils Moodle : Un suivi des
alliances stratégiques pour la mise en place de l'apprentissage en ligne des langues à l'Université du
Swaziland », in Actes de conférence Grand Forum Francophone pour la Recherche et l’Innovation (EFRARD
2010), Rachel Kamga (coordinatrice), ISBN 978-2-909285-66-5, 176 pages, Paris : Europia Productions.
2010 FERREIRA-MEYERS, K. Strategic alliances for online learning within the Department of Modern Languages
(University of Swaziland), in TEDC 2010 Proceedings, published online at
http://playpen.meraka.csir.co.za/~acdc/education/TEDC2010/proceedings/Strategic%20alliances%20for
%20online%20learning%20within%20the%20Department%20of%20Modern%20Languages.doc.
24. Social media
Even though most of our learners have Facebook
accounts, very little research has been done on how to
integrate social media in teaching and learning in
Swaziland. Nevertheless, this is, according to me, an
emerging trend.
25. SMSs
As recently as 21 August 2013 did the Institute of
Distance Education have staff meeting discussions
regarding the possible use of SMSs for certain of our
required communication with learners.
Nothing definite has been decided, but an ad hoc
committee will further analyze the needs and
possibilities of the communication mode.
26. CONCLUSION
This set of slides gives an overview of some
of the current trends in instructional
technology. They are by far exhaustive, but
give only selected avenues of growth for the
future.
