Abstract:

The digital divide in South Africa is significant as the access to Personal Computers and Internet services are limited. Therefore, students, especially those that live in rural areas, are at risk of not being able to benefit from the advantages of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) as their exposure to computers are limited. This also means that when the student enters Higher Education, they are at risk of falling behind as ICT is being used as educational tools in this environment. Reasons cited for the low computer literacy rate among University students in South Africa include the poor socio-economic circumstances of the students which are often from rural areas and English being their second language. In order to circumvent this challenge, all first year students were instructed to participate in a Basic Computer Literacy (BCL) programme during their first two weeks at University. The programme consisted of an initial test to determine the Computer Literacy skills of the students, 5 classes and a post test to determine if the students improved. A positivistic approach was followed in this study with 1345 students participating in the programme. The study showed that the computer literacy rate at the University of Fort Hare is very low (38%) among first year students and as expected, the students form rural areas performed the worst at 33%. After attending the short course, students were able to demonstrate that their computer literacy skills had improved as the average pass rate improved to 54.01%. Further instruction after the initial short course was found not to be as beneficial (pass rate 40,5%). The results showed that a short course can be used to improve the computer literacy of students in a relatively short period of time; but is not as beneficial if the programme is extended for a further period.

Keywords:

ICT literacy, digital divide, information and communication technology literacy, learner management system.