Instant Messaging Tutoring: A Case of South Africa

Resource type
Conference Paper
Authors/contributors
Title
Instant Messaging Tutoring: A Case of South Africa
Abstract
This research study was focused on determining the role social media, and in particular, instant messaging can have in providing tutor assistance to high school students. The study investigates the implementation of Dr. Maths, an instant messaging tutoring service that ran successfully in South Africa from 2007 to 2013. With the demise of the Dr Maths initiative, there hasn't been any further reconstruction of this sort. The results of this study strongly indicate that learners see value in having a tutor assist them with schoolwork, over the WhatsApp IM platform. This will allow for access to much required educational resources particularly in disadvantaged communities in developing countries such as South Africa. However, it is recommended that any solution implemented be as platform agnostic as possible to avoid a recurrence of the issue faced by Dr. Maths.
Date
2019-01
Proceedings Title
2019 9th International Conference on Cloud Computing, Data Science & Engineering (Confluence)
Conference Name
2019 9th International Conference on Cloud Computing, Data Science & Engineering (Confluence)
Pages
615-619
Short Title
Instant Messaging Tutoring
Library Catalogue
IEEE Xplore
Citation
Budree, A., & Hendriks, T. (2019). Instant Messaging Tutoring: A Case of South Africa. 2019 9th International Conference on Cloud Computing, Data Science & Engineering (Confluence), 615–619. https://doi.org/10.1109/CONFLUENCE.2019.8776928