A Culture-Oriented e-Learning System (e-LS) for Higher Education Institutions in South Africa

Abstract

The utilisation of e-learning system has added value to the South African (SA) educational system. South African (SA) educational system consists of learners (students) coming from different backgrounds, cultural settings and societies. This diversity possesses a great number of different characteristics, expectations and learning styles from the e-learning system. Globally, managing diversity among students is missing out from different literature studies and this is the result of lack of culture-oriented e-learning system which has affected easy development and effective usage of the e-learning system. In order to execute a culture-oriented e-learning system, this research sought to understand the challenges faced by the current e-learning system and how to implement an effective culture-oriented e-learning system. The research findings showed lack of cultural elements in e-learning system and it also showed that there is no solid collaboration among the developers and the users (learners) during the developmental phase. To arrive at this finding, the researchers employed quantitative research method (questionnaire) and performed data correlation on the collected data among students from the North-West University (Mafikeng Campus); 150 questionnaires were circulated and 141 were returned. The participants were randomly selected because they use e-learning system in their daily learning process. Generally, the solution to this underlying challenges lies with culture-oriented e-learning system.