Abstract:

At a residential university, the transition from first-year studies to second-year studies is not as onerous as the transition for a distance education candidate. The distance education candidate at times is working alone and will have to navigate complex academic and administrative tasks. It is therefore important to bridge the gap between the distance education candidate and the university.

The purpose of this research is to better understand the issues that affect the course in Information Administration 2 at a distance education university.

Business Informatics IIB is designed to enable an intermediate level business analyst to understand information systems and management strategies, explain how to manage data resources and identify the role of appropriate technologies in a business environment, describe the enterprise applications and integrations of business processes, and enhance decision making in the organization. Students will be equipped to interpret information into appropriate business information systems.

Using activity theory as a lens to understand the analysis a context-specific model is designed to better understand the issues that affect Business Informatics IIB candidates

This study employs a mixed method approach. The quantitative data consists of data in the form of assignment marks, examination marks, and online activity will be statistically analysed.

The data exhibits pass rate rates at first year and second year were different cohort. The second year students pass rates were significantly reduced relative to the first year students. Hypothesis testing suggest that the first year and second year more scores were significantly different at a 95% level.

A qualitative analysis of the responses to assignments and exam answer papers suggest that second year students lack pre-conceptual understanding the concepts in the second year. The content developer for the course needs to redesign the course 2 taking into account the pre-concepts in the second year course for a seamless understanding of the year 2 concepts. Further, the instructional developer include the Community of Inquiry Model within the course so that the students do not feel alone whilst engaging with the course.

Keywords:

Computing education, open distance learning, the undergraduate experience, activity theory, online learning.