The digital difference between traditional information provision and students’ expectations in developing countries

Abstract

Developing countries and South Africa in specific have shown phenomenal growth in the mobile sector. This has resulted in some challenges and opportunities for alleviating digital poverty through distance education. One of these challenges is that many students are mobile primary and accustomed to incorporating their mobile devices’ information capabilities into their daily routines while institutional information access is personal computer based. The rapid pace of mobile technology development may well create a mobile divide where educators, administrators and policy makers do not understand the students’ usage of mobile devices in teaching and learning. Therefore they may be reluctant to promote mobile-centric access and this will lead to a disparity between information provision and students’ information needs. Distance education is often the only higher education opportunity available to developing communities and these communities are generally more mobile centric than pc-centric. Therefore, there is a need at institutional level to understand the mobile information access needs of mobile primary users and to develop strategies that facilitate mobile cellular technology access to services, content and participation. This study investigates students’ needs and expectations regarding mobile cellular technology access to educational services, content and participation mechanisms in an open distance learning (ODL) university. The context of this study is the University of South Africa (Unisa). The contribution of the paper is to identify Open ODL students’ needs regarding mobile phone access needs to information. The research design includes capturing the students’ mobile information access needs by using an open ended survey.