The eLearning Adoption Survey: Day 3

Day 3: (14 responses received).
Are you an academic in higher education? Are you from or working in any of the following countries (Angola, Botswana, Burundi, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe)? If so, you are invited to participate on an eLearning adoption survey. Click here to participate. A guide on how to go about filling in the questionnaire is available here.

Day 28@1203 28 June 2008

Number of responses: 74

Number of valid responses: 38

Number of saved responses: 6

Countries represented: 11

Universities represented: 20

Day 13@1505 13 June 2008

Number of responses: 59

Number of valid responses: 30

Number of saved responses: 5

Countries represented: 8

Universities represented: 11

Day 9@1525 09 June 2008

Number of responses: 29

Number of valid responses: 16

Number of saved responses: 1

Countries represented: 6


Day 3@2017 03 June 2008

Number of responses: 14

Number of valid responses: 6

Number of saved responses: 1

Countries represented: 5 (Kenya (2), Mozambique (1), Rwanda (1), South Africa (1) , Zimbabwe (1)).

Universities presented: 6 (University of Nairobi (1), Africa Nazarene University (1), National University of Rwanda (1), Stellenbosch University (1), Catholic University of Mozambique (1), National University of Science and Technology (1)).

Gender representation (6 Male, 0 Female).

More information also available on my homepage.

What is in a Language?

This week, while in Mozambique, I encountered a context that made me ask myself a question that was once asked when I was learning Principles of Programming Languages. In Maputo, the majority of the people speak Portuguese (as the only international language), and here I am, without any knowledge of Portuguese (and ignorant of the fact that there might be people in Africa who would not understand a word in English). Then the question, what is in a language? I know different disciplines would try to approach this questions differently. For an anthropologist, something like culture, community, society might come up, while for a computer science person, things like functional, and procedural approaches would probably be considered. Whatever the discipline, I believe there would be some form of agreement in that a language creates some sense of identity, pride, and to a lesser (though important fact) economic power (a language sells).

I have worked in eLearning projects where we preach of contextualization, localisation, or adaptation of learning content, processes and scenarios but my experiences here made me appreciate better their meaning and importance. The ideas being preached should enhance the identity of the learning to the specific target, which in turn can create a sense of pride among the audience. Once this is achieved, some economic transformation might occur.