An evaluation of the implementation of e-learning: selected high schools in the Eden central Karoo education district

One of the post-1994 democratic government’s foremost tasks has been to transform education into a more responsive tool in building communities in order to drive economic and social development. Thus, today a number of legislation and policy changes were made. Throughout the country, today emergence of technology in education paradigm is at the center of education development, terms such as e-Education and e-Learning are popular. The Western Cape Education Department in particular is bound to align its policies and programmes to ensure that they speak the language of the fourth industrial revolution. The Western Cape Government’s (WCG) vision on e-Learning as informed by the White Paper 7, policy document on e-Education and further supported by the National Development Plan (Operations Phakisa), has adopted various policies and projects on education. This includes the game changer initiative of the WCG that gave birth to the e-Learning project. As part of this project the WCG has invested hundreds of millions to implement the project throughout the schools in the Western Cape province. The aim of this study is to enhance ICT solutions in schools, educator professional development, learner upskilling and infrastructure development, in order to achieve social and economic inclusion of the people of the Western Cape. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the implementation of the project, while identifying the challenges experienced and further record corrective measures that should be taken into cognisant in order to achieve the successful completion of the project. The literature review was undertaken to provide an in-depth understanding of the existing subject body of knowledge. This review covers various subtopics on the subject, comprehensive analysis of the phenomena under investigation and furthermore, look at theoretical perspective of project evaluation. Since the challenges were identified and outlined during the course of evaluation, therefore, corrective measures are thus explicitly taken with cognisant in ensuring completion of the project. Thus, this treatise provides an insight on the emergence of e-Learning, further explain various key concepts and venture to a number of recommendations in improving e-Learning project in the Eden and Central Karoo (Karoo) District of the Western Cape Education Department