E-skills: beyond the haves and have-nots Marco PRETORIUS 1 , Judy VAN BILJON 2 1 University of South Africa, PO BOX 392 UNISA 0003 South Africa Tel: +27124296821, Fax: + 27124296848, Email:marco.pretorius@gmail.com 2 University of South Africa, PO BOX 392 UNISA 0003 South Africa Tel: +27124296873, Fax: + 27124296848, Email:vbiljja@unisa.ac.za Abstract: The importance of skills in information and telecommunications technology (ICT) has made e-skills research a national priority in South Africa. Existing e-skills research differentiates between different kinds of e-skills but not between e-skill competencies such as novice, competent and proficient. Towards addressing the bigger question of e-skills classification, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the differences between participants with high e-skills (proficient users) and those with intermediate e-skills (competent users). The paper compares performance and feedback from e-skills competent and proficient participants in a usability study performed on the Website of a distance learning university. The research methods include task based usability testing augmented by eye tracking, and post-test questionnaires. Our findings suggest the need for differentiating e-skills into at least three categories of competency when doing e-skills research. This adds a competency dimension to the existing skills type dimension thus leading to a two- dimensional matrix for representing the e-skills of participants. The findings contribute towards building a theoretical framework to assess and monitor e-skills developments in order to overcome the existing digital differences between population groups in South Africa. Furthermore the lessons learnt can be useful to avoid pitfalls in the recruitment and testing of participants and the analysis of e-skills research. The paper should be of interest to educators, e-learning designers, researchers and policy-makers. Keywords: e-skills, usability, eye tracking 1. Introduction E-skills is a national asset, and e-skills research a national priority [1, 2] and yet the concept of e-skills is not well-defined [3]. There are research initiatives from government agencies, educators and trainers, and employers as summarised in the study of Roodt and Paterson [1] on ICT professionals in the South African context and yet a standardised framework for defining and describing e-skills does not exist[3]. Alexander, Lotriet and Matthee [4] found that despite the volume of research generated existing research on e-skills shortages is difficult to interpret, not comprehensive enough and often not credible. They highlight methodological challenges and identify various problems, including the fact that the methods have been mostly limited to surveys while respondent and researcher profiles were not sufficiently explained [4]. Not having adequate information about who gathered the data and from whom they gathered the data makes it difficult to validate the findings. Against this background, we seek to provide more insight about the categorisation of e-skills towards developing a standardised framework for classifying e-skills. E-skills have been differentiated horizontally into ICT practitioner skills, ICT user skills and e- Business skills [2]. However, there seems to be no evidence of vertical differentiation other than an oversimplified classification of e-skills participants as haves and have-nots. The purpose of this paper is to investigate if there is a need for a finer grained classification of participants based on e-skills competency. The methodology is interpretivist, aiming to