Developing a Framework to Adopt E-learning Barriers in an Emerging Higher Institution: A South African Perspective

The popularity of e-learning (EL) largely infiltrated into every sector of South African institutions of
higher learning. This growing interest in EL is due to the advent of rapid internet technologies. For
decades, South African institutions of higher learning have accepted EL as a vital learning tool for the
enhancement of learning and teaching within the higher education sector. However, there are
countless challenges that continue to hinder learning and teaching activities. This study seeks to
determine the relationships between various challenges and EL capabilities through stated
hypotheses. The study is a descriptive, qualitative design aided by a quantitative approach that were
applied to collect data. In total 150 full and part-time ICT students including four permanent ICT
lecturers participated in the study. By means of statistical methods of descriptive, inferential statistics
aided by independent t-tests, three stated hypotheses were formulated and tested. The study,
therefore, recommends that higher institutions of learning should increase investments in various EL
programs including relevant ICT infrastructure development and also in levels of connectivity. Given
the fact that most students are from rural high schools where the bulk of ICT equipment is nonexistent
thus, these schools are ill-equipped. It is therefore critical that further cultural characteristics
of students be examined, for instance, how individual students learn, interact and communicate
constitutes a core e-learning foundation. Simply put, e -learning is an independent learning program;
hence, the students are unlikely to understand the contents in complex languages. The study further
recommends that EL contents should be designed taking into account the cultural characteristics of
students. By adopting cultural traits some of the inherent cultural barriers would be minimized to
enhance the development of specific framework to augment expected learning experiences.