South Africa- 4th June, 2008 – South Africa’s drop-out rate from tertiary institutions is alarmingly high, with almost 50% of all students entering the tertiary education system not completing their studies. This costs the country billions in cash.

One reason cited by an HSRC study is that students are not equipped with the correct study tools in order to cope with the academic work load in the first years of their degrees.  An online study skills programme, designed to meet the needs of South African students, is one way to equip students with the tools needed to cope with a demanding study regime.
Named Masifunde, after the isiXhosa phrase “let us learn”, the study skills programme is a response to the challenges that students face in South Africa, such as the lack of study know-how due to deficient preparation at high school level and high pressure to get a job whilst studying at the same time. In fact the HSRC Student Pathways Study, conducted from 2002-2004, found that “many of those who dropped out had worked to augment their meagre financial resources, no doubt adding to their stress levels”.
Using a study skills programme developed by the Oxford University Department for Continued Education as a base for the South African version, TSiBA and Oxford University worked together to form Masifunde.   Tristram Wyatt of Oxford University has been involved in the development process for the programme in South Africa. “The programme is locally adaptable, concentrating on not-for-profit organisations to use with their students,” he says.  “It’s aim is to arm students with coping tools like good study skills in order to alleviate some of the challenges they are faced with in the quest to qualify with a tertiary education.”
Oxford University and TSiBA Education, a non-profit, free-to-student university were a perfect match to launch this project.  “TSiBA’s strong ethos of helping others fitted well with our own intention of reaching out and helping students,” adds Wyatt.  Like any university, TSiBA struggles to retain students because of the socio-economic circumstances in the country and therefore understands the importance of developing a course that will help its students to cope with the workload.
“By offering this course free to other institutions to use with their students, TSiBA’s philosophy of, `pay it forward’ is mirrored well in this programme” says Leigh Meinert., MD of TSiBA.  “We have been brainstorming a suitable structure for the programme since last year to ensure that it is accessible. By bringing in our own students to tell us what it is they need to get out of the study skills programme, we have been able to set a realistic programme that answers the needs of the students,” says Meinert.

Source: IT-Online

Without a doubt, today’s world is knowledge-based and depends on the rapid exchange of information. Countries that are equipped with the technology and knowledge to participate in the new electronic world are major players in its socio-cultural and economic developments. Education is changing, too. With the advent of multimedia technologies and the Internet, it is now possible to reach people who would otherwise have no access to certain courses or educational opportunities.

Electronic learning, or e-Learning as it has come to be known, makes use of the Internet and digital technologies to deliver instruction synchronously or asynchronously to anyone who has access to a computer and an Internet connection.

By some estimates, between 800,000,000 and 1,500,000,000 people world-wide understand English. Approximately 350,000,000 people use English as their mother tongue (mainly in the United Kingdom, the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and South Africa). Some 400 million use English as a second language (in countries such as Ghana, Nigeria, Tanzania, Pakistan, and the Philippines). At least another 150 million people use English with some degree of competence. Furthermore, it is an official language in more than 60 countries (Crystal 1992, p.121). With such a large number of people using English, it is not surprising that English has become the lingua franca of the modern world.

In the current state of affairs, the global dominance of English in commerce, science, and technology has created the need for an ever increasing number of people to learn to communicate in the English language. There is a market demand for English courses on a global scale, and the English language teaching industry is thriving.

As English is experienced across different linguistic contexts, it may be experienced primarily as a language of education, or higher education, as well as in official contexts, popular culture, and the local vernacular. It may be regarded as a language of social and economic advancement, or it may be seen as an imposition or a necessary evil. However it is seen, the English language is used across the globe in countless contexts to very different effects.

Thus, proficiency in English is seen as essential for participation in the global arena, particularly in the economic domain, in which transnational corporations conduct business and trade beyond the national borders. In addition, the global spread of the English language is further facilitated by American media products of mass communication such as videos, music, news, magazines, TV programs, and so on. The dominance of English on the Internet reinforces the flow of international information in English, and affirms the structure of global communication. English is the most widely used and taught language in the world, and it is accepted easily almost anywhere.

Second-language acquisition and intercultural learning can be greatly facilitated through e-Learning. At present, e-Learning is itself becoming an important global business not only in the commercial sector, but also in the support that national governments are giving to educational institutions to increase their export income. There is a drive for change brought on by technological innovation to which governments and institutions of higher learning are responding at a rapid pace.

Learn Skills aims to address these needs outlined above through the provision of web-based language learning in English initially, and then to expand this range.

Courtesy: In Global Peace Through The Global University System, 2003 Ed. by T. Varis, T. Utsumi, and W. R. Klem, University of Tampere, Hameenlinna, Finland