Off-campus Education as a We-ness: A case for Ubuntu as a Theoretical Framework

Abstract

“Education-for-me” which could, epistemologically considered, probably be classified as typical Western concept where the individual within off-campus education focuses on individualised “education-for-me”, thus making the individual the most important ordering principle. Off-campus education must not be looked upon as a solitary activity or individualised “education-for-me”. Du Toit (2011) classified off-campus education rather a WE-ness in which off-campus education students experience the existential yearning to live and observe the anthropological epistemological principle of communality, collectivity and sociability, also in matters related to their academic lives. In the ideologically based anthropological epistemological view of “communality”, man is regarded primarily as a social being, focused socially essentially on the reality surrounding him/her, and growing into a belonghesion (cohesion of belonging) towards a communal unity within a particular off-campus community as aim. “Just-for-me education” is, anthropologically regarded, thus a typically Western epistomological concept where the individual, within off-campus education, focuses on individualised education, the individual being the most important basis for physical planning. This theoretical paper attempts to determine the  extent to which African students prefer to adhere to the anthropological epistemological principle of communality, collectivity and congeniality, thus not individualised education or “just-forme” education, in off-campus education.

Key words: distance education, distance learning, e-learning, flexi-learning, face-to-face education, contact education, teacher training, social contact, and social communication.