Towards Enhancing Open Distance Learning Students' Roles and Responsibilities: An African Epistemological Perspective

South Africa requires an educated population to sustain her economic development. Higher education institutions are under pressure to produce graduates with skills and competencies to fulfil such an aspiration. Distance education is an essential avenue through which more South Africans can have the much-needed education without necessarily displacing themselves. Distance education is facilitated and regulated by the White Paper on e-Education which is a generic policy document to serve the needs of the system-wide use of ICT integration at all levels of education. It falls short of conceptualising the implications of ICT in distance education particularly the North-West University's (NWU) open distance learning (ODL) multi-mode of education content delivery. The conceptualisation shortfall facilitates a Western-oriented understanding of knowledge while ODL students' traditional understanding of their roles and responsibilities is ignored. The concepts of roles and responsibilities are critically important for the effective functioning of ODL, and they are essential to the attainment of students' education aspirations. At the NWU, approximately seventy per cent of ODL students are Africans whose worldviews do not harmonise with the vision of universities. The research question which underpinned this study was "What are the experiences of the roles and responsibilities of open distance students at a higher education institution?" This study followed an interpretivist research paradigm, which would draw on a qualitative research approach. A systematic literature review was utilised and subsequently the views of ODL students were explored. Purposive sampling was employed to select ODL students as research participants for focus-group interviews. The collected data were analysed using the computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software (a CAQDAS), ATLAS tiTM. Due attention was given to ethical considerations throughout the study. The findings revealed that ODL students have several ways in which they understand their roles and responsibilities which were shaped by their African worldview, Africanisation. The findings that emerged from the analyses of roles and responsibilities were task orientation; time management; personal growth; social roles; financial responsibilities; personal responsibilities; family responsibilities; and social responsibilities. [For the complete Volume 21 proceedings, see ED629259.]