Recently I worked with a client that had a very specific need: would their course, conceptualised for a foreign market, work in the South African context? Having recently returned to South Africa from the states, I felt uniquely qualified to take this on, given my experience with context switching in the educational landscape. Due to the time constraints, these localisation considerations needed to be high-level in nature and produced on a tight timeline. Areas I considered were:
- Language and terminology: South Africa has an English of its own, and some words, terms, and measurement units needed tweaking. I also considered what other languages the course might be translated into in the future. English is one of twelve official South African languages, so the more languages, the greater the potential reach of the course.
- Varying education levels: I reviewed the content, as well as the course’s promises of what students would learn, against the educational background of South Africa and made recommendations accordingly.
- Instructional design and content layering: I looked closely at whether course and module objectives were clear and aligned to the course content, whether students had enough context to make a decision about whether or not the course was for them in the first place, whether the topics flowed smoothly from one to the next, whether assessments were meaningful and aligned with the relevant objectives, and whether there was any content that could be added, removed, or reworked, and provided recommendations accordingly.
- Context relevance: Some concepts might be better addressed from a slightly different angle. Consider the topic of load shedding, for example. This is an idea with which South Africans are intimately familiar, so content on this topic might be written with this in mind. In addition, any other aspects of study expectations, course content, and so on might be adjusted to accommodate this context. Other tweaks, such as using local talent in videos and images, could also make the course feel more relevant to South African students.
This was a short, but educational project, and I look forward to potentially engaging with the client in the future to put my ideas into action.
