Using Mobile-based Social Media to Facilitate Interaction and Build Communities through the lens of Ubuntu in Distance Education
Date
2019-07Abstract
This paper examines how WhatsApp can be used to build learning communities and facilitate interaction, through the lens of Ubuntu – an African concept of humanness, which means that an individual person owes his or her existence to the existence of others. The Afrocentric concept of Ubuntu and interaction work concomitantly towards the realisation of vocabulary teaching and learning within distance education. Through this study, students were encouraged to work together through a mobile-based social network to learn English vocabulary. Ubuntu was used as a framework to analyse the WhatsApp chats to find salient themes relating to building communities and enhancing interaction. The key elements of Ubuntu grounded the findings and demonstrated how technology can be used to bridge the interaction distance and how Ubuntu principles are articulated in the communities of learning. This paper illustrates how Ubuntu is manifested in a local context, with principles that can be applied globally to enhance collaboration.
Collections
Metadata
Show full item recordRelated Items
Showing items related by title, author, creator and subject.
-
Enhancing ICT Adoption and Use Through Change Leadership: Technology Stewardship Training for Caribbean Agricultural Communities of Practice
(Commonwealth of Learning (COL), 2018-12)Beginning in 2012, the University of Alberta in partnership with others has been undertaking participatory action research in Sri Lanka and, since 2017, in the Caribbean to foster inclusive innovation through a Joint ... -
Social Networking Sites as Communication, Interaction, and Learning Environments: Perceptions and Preferences of Distance Education Students
(Commonwealth of Learning (COL), 2017-11)The advent of Web 2.0 technologies transformed online networks into interactive spaces in which user-generated content has become the core material. With the possibilities that emerged from Web 2.0, social networking sites ... -
Book Review: Open and Distance Non-formal Education in Developing Countries by Colin Latchem
(Commonwealth of Learning (COL), 2019-03)In compiling over 180 cases of successful open and distance non-formal education (ODL NFE) interventions from across the developing world, the late Colin Latchem, author of Open and distance non-formal education in ... -
Promoting student support in Open and Distance learning using Information and Communication Technologies
(Commonwealth of Learning (COL), 2019-07)The study investigated the use of ICTs in students support in Open and Distance learning (ODL) at Makerere University. The study adopted a survey design with 327 ODL students, and the data from participants were collected ... -
The Jeffrey Town Model for Community Development
(Commonwealth of Learning, 2014)The Jeffrey Town model for community development has been effectively applied to the rural community of Jeffrey Town in Jamaica with Information and Computer Technology (ICT) as a key element. The farmer's association is ...
