Introduction-Motivation: Living, studying, traveling and working abroad can be an incredible, challenging experience or a nightmare, depending on how you interact with the local culture. Many things bring on culture shock: different food and ways of eating, shops and prices, attitude of people, customs and language problems. It is the strangeness, uneasiness or even fear we experience when we move from our home country and familiar surroundings, to live in a new and different society. Culture shock is now considered to be a natural part of the adjustment to studying abroad (Carmen, 1998:3). Although it can be disconcerting and a little crazy, the shock gradually eases as you begin to understand the new culture. It is useful to realize that often the reactions and perceptions of others towards you - and you towards them - are not personal evaluations, but are based on a clash of cultural values. The more skilled you become in recognizing how and when cultural values and behaviours are likely to come in conflict, the easier it becomes to make adjustments that can help you avoid serious difficulties. This research is aimed at identifying the most common differences between local South African and Chinese culture, and will investigate the experiences of Chinese students at the University of Port Elizabeth (UPE), South Africa, as well as a local Chinese family in order to develop a strategy to minimize culture shock. Research Problem: Chinese students at UPE experience various difficulties in adjusting to local university life. These problems range from practical difficulties regarding transport, accommodation and finances to less easily defined issues related to language and culture. While the “practical” difficulties are often prioritized and solved (or at least alleviated), those relating to culture are not adequately addressed. Chinese students at UPE consequently find it difficult to socialize with local students; they find it difficult to interact during lectures, and they are unsure about forming student-teacher relationships. All of this impedes academic progress, increase worry/fear of failure, and lead to homesickness and ultimately depression. Local Chinese business people have, through trial and error, learnt to adapt to the idiosyncrasies of South African culture (in its diverse forms). This is apparent from interviews which were conducted with a local Chinese businessman and his family who have successfully adapted to the local environment in order to identify the major obstacles to cultural acclimatization, as well as useful strategies, communicational ones among others, that enabled them to adapt.

This study investigates whether a leadership and management development programme changed the management perceptions of the teachers of one of the schools that participated in the programme. The programme seeks to change the organisational culture of schools and develop effective management. The development philosophy of the programme is informed by literature on school effectiveness, organisation development, whole school development and systemic change. My research is conducted in the interpretive paradigm. Interpretive researchers view reality a construct of the human mind, and therefore the way people perceive the world is not necessarily the same since there can be different understandings of what is real. I employ convenience sampling to select the school and purposive sampling to identify my research participants. Whilst overall impression that the data conveys is that much of the programme does not seem to have had a lasting effect on the culture of the school, it nonetheless made an impression on the teachers’ perceptions of management. There clearly seems to be a greater appreciation of participative management processes. The reintroduction of proper prior planning played a decisive role in re-establishing sound work ethics at the school and contributes to a more structured approach to events at the school. Some sort of organisational learning has also been introduced at the school. The realisation on the part of the staff that they now have their destiny in their own hands is an especially critical development. And whilst the vision is not a compelling force in the organisation, it has nevertheless produced some strategic focus at the school. The insights and skills they acquired concerning resource management will also stand them in good stead.

At the University of Port Elizabeth (UPE), the End User Computing course (EUC) acts as a service course for many departments. This implies that many students are forced by their curricula to register for this course. The ever-increasing numbers in EUC place a considerable load on existing human and physical resources. In lecture groups of 120 –160, students rarely get the attention they need, and the pace at which the content is delivered (too slow or too fast) may also inhibit the learning process. During an initial investigation into E-learning at UPE in 1999, a prototype virtual classroom was developed. There were, however, a number of problems with this prototype. Firstly, it was implemented using a number of different technologies, which made it difficult to extend and maintain. Secondly, it only addressed some aspects of an E-learning environment, which proved insufficient for the EUC course. In the existing EUC course at UPE, the students are already exposed to some E-learning concepts, as a section of their skills training component is handled by using multimedia software in a simulated environment. The objective of this project was to extend the E-learning component further to determine the advantages and disadvantages of using E-learning to support information technology (IT) education in a contact-university environment. This project included a literature search and survey of existing E-learning environments at other universities. This research was used to develop a draft framework for an E-learning environment. The framework was used to select a tool to create an E-learning environment at UPE. An experiment was designed using this E-learning environment to support two IT courses at different year levels. The results of the experiment were analysed using qualitative and quantitative methods to determine the impact of using E-learning to support IT education at UPE. The results of this research show that E-learning can be used to support IT education at UPE. More success, however, was achieved at postgraduate level than at first-year level. Making use of Elearning increased student satisfaction and promoted active learning, while providing benefits like convenience, communication, flexibility and scaffolding. We conclude, therefore, that E-learning can provide a flexible approach to IT education in a university environment in the future.