AJIC Issue 15, 2015

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/handle/10539/19266

There is already extensive scholarly publishing on informatics and ICT4D, charting the contours of early stage digital transformation in Africa. This issue of The African Journal of Information and Communication (AJIC) publishes a collection of articles developed from papers presented at the 44th Southern African Communications Lecturers Association (SACLA) Conference, held on 2 and 3 July 2015 at Open, Maboneng Precinct, Johannesburg. The theme of the conference was “Renewing ICT teaching and learning: Building on the past to create new energies”. The emphasis on renewal offers an important message to academics and universities to push forward with change, in an era where change inertia has set in in many parts of the higher education environment and where a reminder is needed that, in the 21st century, change is the only constant. Digital technologies will only create value in the university experience when used for active innovation in teaching and learning, rather than passive availability. Investment in university Internet access, where most ICT spending has historically focused, offers only the foundation for educational informatics, not the digital learning experience. Educational futures require investment in the creative side of digital media use for teaching, learning and research. Issue 15 also publishes a range of unsolicited articles relevant to this thematic area, carefully reviewed, revised and edited. These articles illustrate the breadth of the field of informatics and its importance for future development, as well as the new research problems in the fields of informatics and ICT4D.

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    An Ecological Model to Understand the Variety in Undergraduate Students’ Personal Information Systems
    (LINK Centre, University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), Johannesburg, 2015-12-15) Backhouse, Judy; Hughes, Mitchell
    A first-year undergraduate course in Information Systems in a South African university includes an opportunity for students to reflect on their own use of information and personal information systems. Their reflections provide data about the technologies and tools that they use to find and manage everyday life information, as well as academic information, and about the sources of information they draw on. This paper analyses data collected over three years and reports on the dominant technologies and information sources that students use. We then adapt the ecological model of information seeking and use developed by Williamson (1998) to make sense of the diversity of information sources and students’ choices in engaging with them. The results show that students rely to a very small degree on traditional university information sources. The study offers insights into the information contexts and behaviour of students and argues for the importance of a flexible range of information sources to support students in the complex process of managing information for academic success. The results will be of interest to those involved in designing and delivering undergraduate programmes, as well as those providing information services and infrastructures.