Abstract:

Like many institutions in South Africa, North West University (Mafikeng Campus) is a home to local and international students. It admits students from neighbouring countries within the African continent and from overseas. This diverse nature of studentship calls for a very intense orientation program on the part of the university. Often times the designed program of orientation does not adequately respond to the diverse needs of students coming in to take membership with the university community. These diverse needs range from social, economic, academic, political and basic human needs. The study is based on in-class activities to design a need responsive orientation programme for international students admitted at the university. The aim of the study is to show how technology can be used within a lecture room to respond to real life problem outside of the lecture room. It also seeks to raise awareness on how technological skill acquired by student in their different faculties could be put to use to resolve real life situations. It is an illustration of how structured use of technology could enhance collaborative and self-directed learning. The subjects of study are student assistants employed in Academic Development Centre (ADC) as part of the orientation team of the university. They are given the mandate to design an orientation program using available technological gadgets. The orientation programme started from recruitment through to registration up to orientation within the campus.Data was collected through (a) unstructured interviews with the assistants to appraise their feelings about the project at hand, particularly the value of Information Communication Technology (ICT) gadgets and (b) a thorough examination of the orientation programme designed in terms of the extent to which it is responsive to the needs of international students. The results indicated a reduction of the time spent on project because of increased access to information through ICTs. The interviews showed high rate of interest and therefore increased participation. The study concludes that structured use of ICTs could be an answer to the desired collaborative, blended and self-directed learning. It confirms the assertion that students become motivated to learn if there is evidence that their learning could have immediate contribution to real life problems. The recommendation from the study is that institutions of higher learning should embrace what used to be a distraction within a classroom setting as a useful tool to enhance learning and teaching.

Summary:
The study is an illustration of how ICTs could be meaningfully employed in a classroom setting to enhance learning and teaching against the commonly held belief that they constitute a distraction – impede meaningful engagement with the learning process.

Keywords:

Information Communication Technology, collaborative learning, classroom participation, self-directed learning, blended learning.