According to a report on TECTONIC, the University of South Africa (UNISA), one of the world’s largest distance learning institutions, has started availing students with course-related materials using the open source software-based Freedom Toasters, which it brands as UNISA Toasters. The Freedom Toaster, which was initially developed with the support of Shuttleworth Foundation, is presently used to distribute a variety of electronic content.
In the report, Louise Schmidt, head of Electronic and Web Communication at UNISA states
There is a global trend towards providing students with digital courseware at universities. However, in Africa this is limited by the digital divide and challenges in terms of connectivity. The UNISA Toaster helps us to bridge the divide and provide digital content to students who do not necessarily have Internet access, or enough bandwidth available to download resources. … Our initial plan was to gauge the interest of students to receive digital material. The pilot was a success and we decided to expand the project. We are now launching it at all registration centres in order to assist students to have their study material immediately upon registration, saving them having to wait for material to arrive via conventional mail.
0 responses so far ↓
There are no comments yet...Kick things off by filling out the form below.