Browsing by Author "Civilcharran, Surika."

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Digital skills preparedness of higher education students for the “Real Estate, Finance and Business” sector in South Africa.
(2020) Civilcharran, Surika.; Maharaj, Manoj Sewak.
The 21st century is experiencing rapid technological advancements. Industry need to keep abreast of these advancements, in order to remain competitive. These rapid technological advancements create added pressure for higher education institutions to equip their graduates to meet industry demands. This means that graduates must possess the digital intelligence necessary for the workplace, in order to ensure a thriving economy. Research further suggests that society has high expectations of universities to provide employable graduates. However, with the job market changing so rapidly, universities are finding it difficult to deliver digitally prepared graduates to industry. Furthermore, while researchers view digital skills with the same importance as reading or arithmetic, the South African Qualifications Authority have not yet established and implemented a digital skills framework in their South African National Qualifications Framework with the aim of reducing the digital skills gap. It is therefore important to understand the digital skills that are required of graduates by industry, the digital skills gap between graduates’ digital abilities and the expectations of industry. Further to this, it is also essential to identify the incessant challenges that create the lag in the delivery of adequately equipping graduates with the necessary digital skills, as well as the challenges that impedes the alignment between industry requirements and higher education offerings. In order to achieve these aims, the study adopted a multiphase mixed methods approach, constituting three phases: (1) quantitative, (2) quantitative, and (3) qualitative. In phase one, professionals from the Real-Estate, Finance and Business Services sector in South Africa were surveyed by means of convenience sampling. In phase two, final year commerce students from the top four universities in South Africa that typically feed into the said industry sector, were surveyed by way of proportionate cluster sampling. In phase three, the academic leader of teaching and learning, or the equivalent, from each of the top four universities were purposively selected for structured interviews. Phase one of the study has identified and outlined the digital skills that are required by the Real Estate, Finance and Business Services sector in South Africa, in addition to the level of importance of each digital skill from three individual constructs, namely use of software applications and Web tools, use of information systems, and security measures in digital environments. The results from phase one similarly prompted the development of the proposed digital skills framework, which was designed to be versatile and may be used as a ‘blueprint’ for other industry sectors in South Africa, as well as by other countries to determine the digital skills needed for their industry sectors(s). Phase two results indicated that South African higher education institutions are not adequately preparing their students to meet the requirements of the said industry sector, and this is attributable to a number of challenges. The results from phase three presents ten challenges that hinders the alignment of academic curricula to industry’s digital skills requirements. It further presents the mechanisms used to address the digital skills expected of graduates by industry, in addition to higher education’s envisaged transformation needed to ensure that their digital skills offerings are aligned to industry requirements. These findings will help higher education institutions to systematically align their curricula to meet this sector’s digital skills need. Additionally, the proposed framework may be used to periodically determine the changing needs of the said sector, and may be applied by researchers to determine the digital skills requirements of other industry sectors within South Africa, as well as globally. Furthermore, scholars may use this framework to underpin their study by building additional constructs/items onto it that was not considered in this study. It can be further used as a benchmark by tertiary institutions to determine probable curriculum inadequacies. These findings will also help government in understanding the type of support required by higher education institutions to ensure that graduates are adequately equipped with the necessary digital skills for the said industry sector, which will ultimately sustain the economy and reduce the unemployment rate of graduates that ought to feed into Real-Estate, Finance and Business Services sector of South Africa.
An investigation into the web searching strategies used by postgraduate students at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg campus.
(2012) Civilcharran, Surika.; Hughes, Mitchell.; Hoskins, Ruth Geraldine Melonie.
The purpose of this mixed methods study was to investigate the Web search strategies used to retrieve information from the Web by postgraduate students at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg campus in order to address the weaknesses of undergraduate students with regard to their Web searching strategies. The study attempted to determine the Web search tactics used by postgraduate students, the Web search strategies (i.e. combinations of tactics) they used, how they determined whether their searches were successful and the search tool they preferred. In addition, the study attempted to contribute toward building a set of best practices when searching the Web. The sample population consisted of 331 postgraduate students, yielding a response rate of 95%. The study involved a two-phased approach adopting a survey in Phase 1 and interviews in the Phase 2. Proportionate stratified random sampling was used and the population was divided into five mutually exclusive groups (i.e., postgraduate diploma, postgraduate certificate, Honours, Master’s and PhD). A pre-test was conducted with ten postgraduate students from the Pietermaritzburg campus. The study revealed that the majority of postgraduate students have been searching the Web for six years or longer and that most postgraduate students searched the Web for information from five to less than ten hours a week. Most respondents gained their knowledge on Web searching through experience and only a quarter of the respondents have been given formal training on Web searching. The Web searching strategies explored contribute to the best practices with regard to Web search strategies, as interviewees were selected based on the highest number of search tactics used and they have several years of searching experience. The study was also able to identify the most preferred Web search tool. It is envisaged that undergraduate students can potentially follow these search strategies to improve their information retrieval. This finding could also be beneficial to librarians in developing training modules that assist undergraduate students to use these Web search tools more efficiently. The final outcome of the study was an adaptation Bates’ (1979) model of Information Search Tactics to suit information searching on the Web.
Understanding students’ compliance behaviour with the information security measures within a South African university.
(2022) Masinga, Sabelo Moses.; Civilcharran, Surika.
Today’s organisations are continuously and increasingly being exposed to security breaches. Higher education institutions have also been affected by the increasing occurrences of security breaches. Higher education institutions’ exposure to security breaches have been attributed to factors such as human error and lack of information security compliance among students. Studies have shown that students do not comply with information security policies. Hence, students, like most humans, remain the weakest link in the exposure of information and information systems to cyberattacks. In this study, the protection motivation theory was used as the guiding theoretical framework to understand students’ compliance behaviour with information security measures. This study employed an exploratory research design supported by a quantitative research approach to investigate the factors influencing students’ compliance with information security measures. The data was collected using a questionnaire and was analysed using the statistical package for social science (SPSS). From a stratified sample of 376 participants, the findings indicate that Perceived Severity and Perceived Rewards have the most significant effect on student compliance with information security measures. This study further makes suggestions that may help improve compliance with information security controls within higher education institutions, such as replacing the student card system with biometric fingerprint scanners which are a more convenient method to access the university.
Understanding the factors influencing the adoption of cloud computing in higher education during coronavirus disease: a case of University of KwaZulu-Natal.
(2023) Zondi, Minenhle.; Civilcharran, Surika.
Cloud computing (CC) as a model for internet-based service provisioning, enables the delivery and access of services based on dynamically scalable and virtualized resources (infrastructure, platforms, etc.). For higher education institutions (HEIs) cloud computing provides services anywhere and anytime, as a result of its scalability and pay-as-you-use approach. Although scalable processing and storage, data sharing, and anytime, anywhere access are some of the key advantages that CC may offer enterprises, there are also risks and barriers to adoption, and it is still in its infancy in developing nations. The Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic, which struck the entire world in 2020, compelled institutions to alter their procedures and methods as a result of the social distancing laws that were put in place to stop the spread of Covid-19. The sudden surge of the Covid-19 pandemic caused a quick acceleration towards the adoption and use of CC in learning and education to ensure the continuation of classes. CC had a significant impact in fighting the epidemic and became a saviour for various fields including the education sector. This study seeks to investigate the factors influencing the adoption of CC in HEIs during the upsurge of the Covid-19 virus. The research model utilised is the unified theory of acceptance and use of a technology (UTAUT). The study used a quantitative technique to identify the factors that influence the adoption of cloud computing through a questionnaire survey that was administered to a convenient sample at the UKZN Pietermaritzburg campus. The study found that effort expectancy (EE), performance expectancy (PE) and social influence (SI) all positively influence the behavioural intention (BI) to use CC for learning purposes, with performance expectancy being the highest predictor of behavioural intention to adopt CC for students. Additionally, facilitating conditions (FC) and behavioural intention (BI) were also found to influence the actual sage of CC for learning purposes. These findings are useful as they give university’s policymakers, designers insights into what factors are crucial when implementing CC to ensure the successful adoption by students.