Challenges faced by universities in mass education: What type of technology will suffice for the ODL student?

Abstract

The University of South Africa (Unisa) is one of the world‟s largest „mega universities‟ with a population of more than 250,000 students. The Department of Marketing and Retail Management (DMRM) is one of six academic departments within the School of Management Sciences, which in turn is one of three Schools within the College of Economic and Management Sciences, the largest College within Unisa. The challenge of the Chair of Department of the DMRM is to plan and manage the DMRM in such a way as to ensure that the department continues to deliver relevant marketing education to students, while still meeting the broader University objectives. This planning and management task needs to take into consideration the challenges facing the DMRM in the delivery of marketing education. One such challenge is to decide on what technology to use to deliver and support learning amongst the DMRM‟s students. The process of choosing one or more technologies to adopt as a preferred learning technology within the DMRM can either be done by drawing on the current thinking on this topic in the academic literature, by speaking with peers and other educational and technology experts, by asking the lecturers involved in the every-day delivery of this education, or by surveying students themselves. This study focuses on the lecturers‟ perspectives. The Unisa lecturer, after all, is the key driver behind the delivery of education within the DMRM and will be instrumental in the successful adoption of any technology decided on. Their views were obtained using the Delphi methodology and analysed using a Chi-square analysis. The findings suggest that a learning management system is considered by lecturers as the preferred technology to use.