Recently, electronic books (e-books) have become prevalent amongst the general population, as well as students, owing to their advantages over traditional books. In South Africa, a number of schools have integrated tablets into the classroom with the promise of replacing traditional books. In order to realise the potential of e-books and their…

Graduates with well-developed capabilities in finance are invaluable to our society and in increasing demand. Universities face the challenge of designing finance programmes to develop these capabilities and the essential knowledge that underpins them. Our research responds to this challenge by identifying threshold concepts that are central to…

This article illustrates the experience of introducing e-assessment to a foundational ICT networking course for a "large" group of first-year students at a South African Higher Education Institution. The study employed a mix of participatory action research, systems design, and survey (quantitative and qualitative) analysis over an…

The existing literature on Problem-based learning (PBL) mostly paints a positive picture. If there were more evidence of the limitations of PBL, more could be done to apply the appropriate interventions to optimize the experience of PBL for students. The purpose of this article is to discuss second year medical students' perceptions of the…

Subtitling is a valuable tool for improving literacy and aiding language learning, but what happens when people are unable to read the subtitles? In a recent study on the reading of second language subtitles, participants were shown a subtitled short film while their eye movements were recorded by an SMI iViewX Hi-Speed eye tracker. It was found…

The government's educational reforms since 1994 have focused on equity and redress. Redressing historical imbalances and achieving equity are fundamental policy mechanisms in attempts to restructure South African education. This aspiration is demonstrated in many education policies including the National Norms and Standards for School Funding…

This study investigated educators' understanding of the mediation role in the classroom. A quantitative research approach was used in a survey of a sample of 261 participants. To this end, a questionnaire was used for collecting data. The Chi-square test was used to analyse data and to test the hypotheses of the study. The findings indicated that…

The aim of this study was to establish the level of job satisfaction amongst teachers at special schools. Teachers in special schools need to cope with curriculum changes, the administrative duties that come with these changes, and the learners with their diverse needs. Learners with special needs require a specific educational programme and also…

The inception of no-fee schools and a school-fee exemption policy has become a contentious issue but also an exciting one for school managers in South Africa. Managers opposed to the policy have cited amongst others things, academic standards dropping, as well as parents who can afford to pay jumping on the bandwagon and refusing to pay. While the…

In this paper the use of the Rasch model is explored as a transparent, systematic and theoretically underpinned response to quality issues that are widely recognised as problematic in the refinement of Likert scale questionnaires. Key issues are the choice of length of scale, the pursuit of a favourable estimate of Cronbach's alpha at the possible…

In this study, repeated measures design was employed to compare low performing students' achievements in factoring cubic polynomials using three strategies. Twenty-five low-performing Grade 12 students from a secondary school in Limpopo province took part in the study. Data was collected using achievement test and was analysed using repeated…

This study explored how people perceive the causes of poverty. Literature revealed that there are three broad theoretical explanations of perceptions of the causes of poverty, namely individualistic explanations, where blame is placed squarely on the poor themselves; structural explanations, where poverty is blamed on external social and economic…

The high unemployment rate in South Africa compels potential entrepreneurs to start their own businesses in order to survive. Often this is with little or no formal training or education in entrepreneurship. Since problem recognition and problem-solving are amongst the most crucial competencies required for a successful entrepreneurial career,…

Academic development (AD) programmes for students not complying with the entrance requirements of mainstream programmes in science have been running at a number of universities in South Africa. In this study we contribute to the debate on criteria for the success of AD programmes, specifically in the context of research-intensive universities in…

Outside an academic setting, telecommuting has become fairly popular in recent years. However, research on telecommuting practices within a higher education environment is fairly sparse, especially within the higher distance education sphere. Drawing on existing literature on telecommuting and the outcome of a valuation study on the success of an…