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An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including technology-enabled learning, authentic learning, and higher vocational education.

In the last 20 years, the South African higher education has changed significantly, influenced by global trends national development goals and pressure from local educational imperatives, in the context of a digitally networked world. Shifts in technology enhanced pedagogical practices and in discourses around information and communication technologies (ICTs) have had varying degrees of influence in higher education. This paper takes a rearview of a 20-year journey of technology enhanced learning in South African higher education. An analysis of literature view is presented chronologically in four phases: phase 1 (1996-2000), phase 2 (2001-05), phase 3 (2006-10) and phase 4 (2011-16). In phase 1 technology was used predominantly for drill and practice, computer-aided instruction, with growing consciousness of the digital divide. In phase 2 institutions primarily focused on building ICT infrastructure, democratizing information, policy development and research; they sought to compare the effectiveness of teaching with or without technology. During phase 3 institutions began to include ICTs in their strategic directions, digital divide debates focused on epistemological access, and they also began to conduct research with a pedagogical agenda. In phase 4 mobile learning and social media came to the fore. The research agenda shifted from whether students would use technology to how to exploit what students already use to transform teaching and learning practices. The paper concludes that South Africa's higher education institutions have moved from being solely responsible for both their own relatively poor ICT infrastructure and education provision to cloud-based ICT infrastructure with 'unlimited' educational resources that are freely, openly and easily available within and beyond the institution. Although mobile and social media are more evident now than ever before, teaching and learning practice in South African higher education remains largely unchanged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the challenges facing education systems in general and the South African education system in particular is how to understand ways that teachers change from nonusers of technologies to becoming transformative teachers with technology. Despite numerous initiatives, not limited to training, workshops and so forth, to bring about sustained and wide-spread teacher change, transmission/delivery-based pedagogies and chalk-and-talk methods continue to dominate. While policy directives and professional development programmes aim to effect change in teachers' practice, they tend to fail to create sustainable change in teachers' practice of using emerging technologies (ETs). This paper reports on a study that sought to understand how teachers change their pedagogy of teaching with ETs. Using a Design-Based Research approach, the paper reports on the teachers' pedagogical change framework (Teaching Change Frame -TCF) as a diagnostic tool for locating and mapping how teachers' change. The TCF maps teachers' existing pedagogies and ET uses, and designs a pathway of a change process to effect the desired change. The TCF was tested and refined using data from 325 teachers drawn from rural, resource-constrained schools, urban, well-resourced schools and from preservice teaching students in a decontextualized environment. Following three iterations it was found that teachers' use of ETs in regulated, restrictive ways correlate with transmission pedagogies, unregulated, dispersed ways correlate with transformative pedagogies. The use of TCF not only located teaching pedagogies but also provide different pathways to ensure sustainable change. Findings emphasize the need for teachers to encourage learners to build/create/construct with ETs and for increased interaction in fostering nonregulated dispersed use of ETs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors discuss the relation between emerging technologies and education. They say that emerging technologies are either tools of change or catalysts for transformation. They add that emerging technologies are changing society as everyone knows it and inspiring technological innovations in past un-thought-of practices, beliefs and perceptions.

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses the special issue, which is on the topic of massive open online courses (MOOCs) in higher education and the ways in which these online courses qualify as a disruptive technology in higher education teaching.

In the last decade, emerging technologies and transformative practices have diffused into higher education social systems in ways that formal leadership styles are increasingly stretched to both keep abreast of and to manage. While many scholars have argued for the importance of the role of leadership styles in shaping the strategic direction of institutions, there is a paucity of research on the role that informal leaders, and more particularly opinion leaders and change agents, can play in enabling wide-scale adoption of innovations in higher education institutions. This paper focuses on the ways in which leadership in higher education can best extend their influence to accelerate the diffusion of transformational educational practices using emerging technologies by leveraging informal leaders. To illustrate how this could be achieved, we report on a study of 22 public higher education institutions in South Africa involving 259 participants who responded to an online survey. The survey focused on the uses of emerging technologies to transform the teaching and learning practices and the nature of institutional support such initiatives received. The findings reveal that for emerging technologies to be diffused in institutional social systems, more transformative and less transactional leadership is required. The paper proposes a model for accelerating the diffusion of emerging technologies in higher education institutions and concludes that leveraging informal leadership is particularly critical in accelerating the uptake of emerging technologies practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although there is an increasing use of emerging technologies ( ETs) in higher education internationally and in South Africa in particular, there is little evidence that their use is transforming teaching and learning practice. Anecdotal evidence shows that there is a dichotomy between the technologies supported and used in higher education institutions ( HEIs) on one hand, and technologies owned and predominately in use among students. Thus, the gulf between technologies supported and used for teaching and the technologies used by students for learning has created pressure for educators to 'play catch-up,' resulting in a continuum of pedagogically ineffective to effective uses of ETs. This paper argues that pedagogically sound uses of ETs leverage the broader context of existing practices (cultural-historical context) to design learning activities that transform both the teaching and learning practices. The paper draws data from a national survey on uses of ETs among educators in higher education to propose a pedagogical model of use that has the potential to transform practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction to this special issue is presented, focusing on the use of emerging technologies (ETs) such as social media and mobile communications systems in higher education, as well as the need for further research into the impact of ETs on educational quality.

While supplementation of face-to-face (F2F) teaching with online engagement is increasingly common, the educators' challenge of teaching F2F personalities and facilitating online personalities has not been widely explored. In this paper, we report on a project in which 1st-year students attended F2F sessions and engaged with an anonymous online questioning environment. The differences between students' F2F and online behaviour led to intended and unintended consequences. The purpose of this paper is to explore these intended and unintended consequences of technology use. The project was undertaken over a 3-year period, starting in 2004. In 2004, a pilot project was conducted based on a class of 35 students studying a 1st-year programming course in information systems. The investigation was again conducted in 2005 for the same course, this time with 63 students. In 2006, the project was extended to a class of 610 1st-year commerce students studying an introductory information systems course. In all cases, students met F2F and when online, engaged with an anonymous Web/SMS collaborative tool. The intended consequence was that a blending of F2F with online interaction extended student engagement beyond the limitation of a classroom and provided a forum for further collaboration and consultation. The intended outcome was achieved. An unintended consequence was that the tool provided the lecturer with diagnostic information that was used to impact on pedagogical designs. This was often a result of students taking on an online personality that would very often be extremely frank and honest about the manner in which the course was conducted, and how learning was taking place. The findings show that students used the tool in ways that exceeded the envisaged intention, and student use of the tool positively impacted on the curriculum, pedagogy and general running of the course. The paper concludes that integration of online engagement with F2F teaching adds value to the teaching and learning experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes a web-based communicative space (a Dynamic Frequently Asked Questions environment—DFAQ) in which learners consult one another using questions, and in which both the flow of interaction and its artefacts become a resource available to a community of learners. Anecdotal evidence suggests that learners embarking on their first year of university study enter a world that is essentially text-based and are inclined to view text as an authority, as something fixed that closes rather than opens up enquiry. Motivated by the need to scaffold learners’ engagement with academic text, we developed the DFAQ in which learners asked questions and other learners responded. The article discusses the learning activity that led to student consultation and provides a critical review of the environment based on student interviews. Our conclusion is that the environment provides learners with a unique ‘space’ in which to access questions and responses that they might not have generated themselves. Furthermore, given the environment's capacity to recruit, hold and focus attention as well as model appropriate questioning behaviour, we think that it does indeed provide a space that scaffolds learners’ engagement with the text. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses students' use of computers in the University of Cape Town's (UCT) "walk-in" laboratories. In a time of decreasing resources for higher education, South African universities are required to respond to the myriad inequities of the past while simultaneously ensuring participation in an information and communication technology (ICT)-enabled future. As pressure mounted at the University of Cape Town (UCT) to extend student access to computer laboratories, build bigger and better laboratories, wire residences, improve networks and provide faster computers, students were asked what they do with the computers they already have access to, and whether they are using those computers to support their learning. 1,023 students were observed of whom 56% were female and 44% male. Most were undergraduates, only 14% were postgraduates. Given that there are few facilities available only to postgraduates, this suggests they are more likely to have their own computers at home than undergraduates. Given the primary interest of the researchers in using computers to support students' learning, this survey flagged for them important areas of concern, suggested topics for further research, and clarified for them where useful interventions can be made.