Leveraging Educational Quality in Southern African Educational Systems: A Practitioners� Perspective

Chapter 6. Towards a blended mobile social media model to deepen authentic, contextualised learning in South African higher education

155 Chapter 6 Towards a blended mobile social media model to deepen authentic, contextualised learning in South African higher education Patient Rambe Abstract A profound technological disjuncture exists between South African higher educational institutions (HEIs) deeply anchored in traditional learning management systems (LMSs) and their techno-savvy students who are naturally immersed in mobile learning environments. More so, educators have sub-optimally exploited the institutionally sanctioned LMSs diminishing them to information portals rather than productive, discursive spaces for socially constructive engagement, critical discourses and academic networking. These pedagogical limitations arise from the technical constraints of LMSs namely, their failure to sufficiently extend learning beyond institutionally sanctioned networks, their often “rigid” management of learning through lecturer-regulated controls of the system and limited agency of students in self-generation of content and formation of self-regulated learning networks. Consequently, with limited examples of best practices of use of LMS for deep engagement, students tend to reproduce these superficial applications of technologies without problematizing or transforming them. On the contrary, mobile learning environments have become an ambient rendezvous and natural habitat for student engagement in higher cognitive functions of informed reasoning, critical reflection and argumentation. This chapter, therefore, bridges the engagement gap between traditional LMSs and mobile learning environments by proposing a blended mobile social media learning environment, itself a convergence of traditional LMS mobile and social media learning 156 environments. Traditional LMS’s functional elements are integrated into a mobile social media environment to develop a blended mobile social media environment that offers ubiquitous learning across transitory spaces, contexts, and temporal times. This complex model, mutually constituted by the intersection of technological, academic authority and engagement domains is proposed to overcome the perennial challenges plaguing South African higher education namely, constrained access to academic resources, academic underpreparedness and cultural diversity of learners. Introduction Blended learning (BL) has been a staple discourse among educators and educational technologists for over a decade (Osguthorpe & Graham, 2003; Graham, 2006; Allen & Seaman, 2007; Hayslett, O’Sullivan, Schweizer & Wrench, 2009; Bonk, 2010). The heavily contested debate on BL has evolved from the degree of mix (Allen, Seaman, & Garrett, 2007; Bonk, 2010), perceived contextual flexibility of access to learning resources and fluidity of learning expectations (Sangi, 2009; Ramsey, Hawkins, Housner, Wiegand, & Bulger, 2009), perceived intentions and style of integrating technological tools (Graham, 2006; Thorsteinsson & Page, 2007; Aytaç, 2009; Hayslett, O’Sullivan, Schweizer, & Wrench, 2009) towards an increasing consensus on prospective variability of blends depending on a cluster of considerations. These considerations range from technological provisions, pedagogical intentions, learner and educator expectations, the scale of technology rollout involved, time, energy and commitment to be invested in designing the blends. As such, the debate on the appropriate mix and combinations of blends remains an open, tightly contested mining field. What is clear about the BL debate, however, is the central place that traditional learning management systems (LMSs) occupy as the mainstream transmission media and knowledge bridge between educators and learners’ in knowledge production processes. The value of LMSs in instructivist learning is underpinned by the multiple 157 functions that these learning portals play in content generation, aggregation, transmission and evaluation at university. From a technological affordance perspective, LMSs enable the delivery of learning content and resources to university students, potentially render opportunities to increase interaction between educators and students, and foster student evaluation by providing immediate feedback on online assessments (Martin & Tutty, 2008). From a pragmatic perspective, e-learning systems like LMSs are credited with overcoming overcrowding and insufficient facilities for the delivery of traditionalstyle education to all learners (Alkhalaf, Nguyen, Nguyen, & Drew, 2011). LMSs are also institutionally supported for quality assurance purposes, for instance, allowing audit trails on student activities and performance and providing study guides to learners. Consequently, LMSs like Blackboard and Open Source brands of LMSs have constituted the mainstay technological architecture at South African Universities for dealing with the challenges of access and extending educational resources to students and realising meaningful engagement. In spite of the hailed benefits of LMSs, they are perceptibly ill positioned to tackle head on the emotional, relational and social engagement needs and priorities of today’s youth that has seamlessly integrated their academic aspirations into their relational needs. Veletsianos & Navarrette (2012) aptly observe that LMSs are often criticised for their application as static repositories of content that fail to sufficiently render some robust social experiences found on platforms that have garnered societal interest and appeal. Similarly, Attwell (2007, p. 9) argues that...