The University of SA (Unisa), one of the world's largest distance learning institutions, has adopted an open source "toaster" to provide students with course material.
The Unisa Toaster is a content delivery kiosk that allows users to choose and burn relevant content onto CDs, DVDs or USB flash drives using a touch-screen interface.
"There is a global trend towards providing students with digital courseware at universities," says Louise Schmidt, head of electronic and Web communication at Unisa.
"However, in Africa this is limited by the digital divide and challenges in terms of connectivity. The Unisa Toaster helps us to bridge the divide and provide digital content to students who do not necessarily have Internet access, or enough bandwidth available to download resources."
The Unisa Toaster - based on the "Freedom Toaster" was developed and prototyped by the Shuttleworth Foundation. It is now run independently by Breadbin Interactive, although still supported by the foundation.
It uses a customised open source operating system that allows the kiosks to burn multiple disks at once.
Schmidt says Unisa piloted the toaster last year. "Our initial plan was to gauge the interest of students to receive digital material. The pilot was a success and we decided to expand the project.
"We are now launching it at all registration centres in order to assist students to have their study material immediately upon registration, saving them having to wait for material to arrive via conventional mail."
Schmidt adds that the Toaster is robust and user-friendly. "We ordered 30 Toasters and are busy rolling them out to all of our offices nationwide," she adds.
Breadbin Interactive MD Brett Simpson says Unisa has since ordered a further 31 units.
"Unisa has done amazing work with its Toasters and is leading the way in terms of digital courseware and general content distribution at universities," he says.
He notes the name "Freedom Toaster" was derived from the fact that open source software is free and Linux users refer to burning CDs as "toasting".
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