The learning-technology conundrum: Lecturers’ perspectives

Abstract

A challenge faced by the Chair of the Department of Marketing and Retail Management, an academic department within the University of South Africa, is to adopt and manage appropriate learning technologies to support the department’s learning offerings and students. The conundrum that arises, and which this study attempts to answer, is which learning technologies are the most appropriate for the department to use. Although the university actively promotes certain learning technologies, these are not always adopted uniformly across departments. Furthermore, while some lecturers are averse to using any form of technology in their teaching activities, others may favour one learning technology over another, or may even adopt non-official learning technologies rather than those supported by the university. As the lecturer is key to the delivery of learning within the department, as well as to ensuring the success of any learning technology adopted by the department, it makes sense to understand the views of lecturers as to which learning technologies they see as being the most appropriate to use. Their views were obtained using the Delphi method, and analysed using Chi-square analysis. The findings suggest that a learning management system is considered by lecturers as the most appropriate technology to use.