My name is Sindile Ngubane-Mokiwa, I am registered for the MEd in Distance Education and E-learning. I currently work as a Senior Researcher for the University of South Africa which is the only Open and Distance Learning (ODL) institution in South Africa. I completed my first degree in Mass Communication and worked for some Radio stations in Malawi, Uganda and some private ones here at home. I can therefore attest to the power of media in disseminating information of all times. It is a pity that my institution decided to discontinue the media broadcasting section which delivered education through radio and television.
My honours qualification is in Educational Technology and through I was able to get a better understanding of how technology can be better to facilitate education. Many African teachers or educators with limited technological skills get caught up in what I can call the ‘technological confusion’ whereby they are overwhelmed by the variety of tools. Not only are they overwhelmed but some are not sure how they can take advantage of these tools to enhance their teaching experience. With limited guidance from those with technological competencies; they give-up which impacts negatively in their relationship with their techno-savvy learners. I have therefore taken it upon myself to share my limited technological skills with the teachers and learners through Community Engagement projects.
My masters’ qualification is in Digital Media studies, this one assisted me with enhancing my internet and digital technology skills. It is during this qualification that I decided that distance education was going to be my career of choice. As we interacted with our lecturers through face-to-face and online means I was impressed with their learning facilitation style. It gave me control over my learning, I had to decide how I wanted to learn, present and submit my work. Being somebody that does not like to be confined to one space I really enjoyed doing my assignments outside in the garden with my course mates while hearing the sounds of birds and looking at the blue sky. In fact this inspired to be part of the learning anywhere, anytime generation!
Afterwards, I began with my doctoral study in Curriculum and Instructional Studies. My study investigated Information and Communication Technology as a learning tool, the experiences of students with disabilities. It was conducted with an ODL context and it revealed that though there were efforts towards opening access to all who wanted to learn, not enough was being done to fully include those with disabilities. It also became clear this exclusion was intentional but it was due to a lack of digital inclusion skills amongst the academics. It is against this background that I have registered with UMUC. I am hoping that I will get to learn how students with disabilities can be better supported in a distance and e-learning environment.