This is a presentation about a research project on Emerging Technologies in South African Higher Education Institutions and their impact on transforming teaching and learning. It is a description of the project
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1. An investigation into the use of
emerging technologies to transform
teaching and learning across
differently positioned higher
education institutions in South
Africa
Vivienne Bozalek
University of the Western Cape
South Africa
vbozalek@uwc.ac.za
2. Introduction
• Background and contextualisation of the
project
• The research project itself
• Where we are at with the project currently
and future plans
3. Context - The Global Situation: The
continents to scale
• The land area of each territory is shown here.
• The total land area of these 200 territories is 13,056 million hectares. Divided up equally that
would be 2.1 hectares for each person. A hectare is 100 metres by 100 metres.
• However, population is not evenly spread: Australia's land area is 21 times bigger than
Japan's, but Japan's population is more than six times bigger than Australia's.
Thanks to Prof Brian O’ Connell for use of this slide
4. Tertiary Education
• The highest percentage of the student aged population
enrolled is in Finland. Finland is 3.6 times the world average,
with 140 times the chance of a tertiary education than in
Mozambique.
• Thanks to Prof Brian O’ Connell for use of this slide
5. 12% of the world's population
enter tertiary education
7. Research and Development Expenditure
• Research and development is what scientific and technological and medical companies
engage in to find new designs. This can be an expensive pursuit, given the costs of materials,
machines and skilled specialists. Yet the development of a new design can bring financial
rewards, as well as the benefits of developing a new medicine, gadget or piece of software.
• In 2002, US$289 billion was spent on research and development in the United States; in the
same year there was practically no research and development spending in Angola.
11. We live in a divided society scarred, numbed and embarrassed by extreme poverty and a
devastatingly & seemingly intractable legacy of apartheid.
South African education and practice is shaped by these contradictions and congruencies of
underdevelopment and global competitiveness
12. World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report (Cape
Times, Business Report 10 Sept 2010)
Goal 2: Graduate Success &
12/4/2011
achievement of Attributes
13. South African concerns in higher
education
• The question of how to make higher education more inclusive has been
a central concern internationally over the past two decades (Drakich,
Taylor & Bankier 1995). In South Africa, inclusivity has been even more
of a concern since the first democratic election given the structuring of
educational opportunities on the basis of race under apartheid.
• South African post-apartheid policy documents, reflect an intention to
embrace values such as democracy, openness and a human rights
approach to education (Department of Education, 2001).
• However, there remains a disjuncture between these policy intentions
and the actual experiences of students and staff in the higher education
sector.
14. SA concerns in higher education
The continuing impact of apartheid-designed
segregated higher education institutions and
lack of imaginative attention to issues of
difference in teaching and learning remains
a stumbling block for achieving participatory
parity amongst students in this sector.
15. The importance of addressing the
problem in the current context
• The higher education sector in South Africa currently has an overall
attrition rate of over 50%. The sector is only catering successfully for
under 5% of the black (and coloured) age group (Scott et al., 2007)
• Key factors seen to be within the higher education sector’s control are
affective factors arising from institutional culture and teaching and
learning processes followed in HEIs (Scott et al., 2007)
• Higher education institutions themselves are also unequally placed with
regard to resources and the students that they enroll (Bozalek &
Boughey, forthcoming)
16. Current teaching practice in HE
• Predominantly teacher centred
• Lecture based
• Reliance on rote learning
• Transmission teaching models (Ramsden,
2011)
• Use of technology often replicates traditional
teaching practice: passive, teacher-centered
and didactic instruction (Herrington et al.
2009)
19. Emerging Technologies in South
African HEIs research project
Involves the following research partners:
• A group of eight differently placed HEIs in
South Africa four in the Western Cape (Cape
Peninsular University of Technology (CPUT),
Stellenbosch University (SU), University of
Cape Town (UCT) and the University of the
Western Cape (UWC).
• An international NGO – the Open Courseware
Consortium
21. How the project is carried out
• Three face-to-face meetings per year
• Monthly online meetings
• Google docs file for project documents
• Ethics clearance with HEIs
22. Meeting in November 2011 of Emerging
Technologies Research Team- further
incorporation of potential PhD students for
project
23. The research project
Funded by the National Research Foundation
(NRF) for a period of three years
• Overarching question
How could qualitative outcomes in education
be realised by using emerging technologies to
transform teaching and learning interactions
and paradigms across higher education
institutions in South Africa?
24. Sub-questions addressed by the project
• In what ways are emerging technologies used in innovative
pedagogical practices to transform teaching and learning
across South African HEIs?
• What can be learnt from an in-depth examination of case
studies of innovative practice in a sample of HEIs in which
these emergent technologies are being used?
• What are the conscious and tacit theoretical assumptions
guiding higher educators' teaching and learning practices?
• What models of innovative theory and practice can be
developed from the identification of transformative teaching
and learning interactions and paradigms across the HEIs?
25. Phase 1 of Project - Survey
Ethics clearance
Literature reviews and theoretical frameworks – CHAT
Survey of Emerging Technologies and Teaching and Learning
Practices in SA HEIs
This survey will answer sub-question 1: In what ways are
emerging technologies used in innovative pedagogical
practices to transform teaching and learning across South
African HEIs?
• Design and piloting of questionnaire (May-July 2011)
• Target group: lecturers that are known to be open
to/engaged with technology
• Sent by email to contacts in all public HEIs institution,
snowball sampling
• Three parts to questionnaire – demographic, tools used,
open questions re practices
26. Open ended questions answered by
respondents
• What is the most innovative pedagogical practice that you used
recently using ICTs (in the last two years)?
• What prompted you to initiate or use this pedagogical practice?
(own motivation, addressing a specific problem;
• Please describe your teaching context in which you used this
practice (level of programme, discipline, size of class, students’
characteristics)?
• Which technology/tool did you use? Please describe
• How did you come to use this specific technology? (eg heard from
colleagues, from workshops, from students, from international
conferences) ;
• What impact did it have on your teaching and the learning of your
students?
• Did you use other technologies?
27. Phase 2- Institutional Case Studies
• In-depth case studies (at least one from each of the
participating 8 institutions and 1 INGO) of innovative
pedagogical practices using emergent technologies to
enhance teaching and learning in South African higher
education, with particular emphasis on those that would be
useful and affordable in resource scarce contexts.
These case studies will be used to answer the second and
third research sub- questions:
• What can be learnt from an in-depth examination of case
studies of innovative practice in a sample of HEIs in which
these emergent technologies are being used? and
• What are the conscious and tacit theoretical assumptions
guiding higher educators' teaching and learning practices?
28. Progress of Project
• Ethics clearance
• Review of literature
• Designed, piloted and administered questionnaire
• Analysis of data
• Presentation of data at two national SA
conferences
• One paper written and submitted to journal
• Further papers and conference presentations
planned
• 2012 case study and involvement of new PhD
students
30. References
• Bozalek, V. & Boughey, C. (forthcoming) (Mis)Framing Higher
Education in South Africa. Social Policy and Administration.
• Drakich, J., Taylor, M. and Bankier, J. (1995), Academic freedom is
the inclusive university. In S. Richer and L. Weir (eds), Beyond
Political Correctness: Towards the inclusive university. Toronto:
Toronto University Press. pp. 118-135.
• Herrington, J., Herrington, A., Mantei, J., Olney, I., & Ferry, B.
(2009). Using mobile technologies to develop new ways of teaching
and learning. In J. Herrington, A. Herrington, J. Mantei, I. Olney, & B.
Ferry (Eds.), New technologies, new pedagogies: Mobile learning in
higher education (Vol. 9). Faculty of Education, University of
Wollongong. Retrieved from ro.uow.edu.au/newtech
• Ramsden, P. 2011. When I grow up I want to be spoon-fed. Times
Higher Education. 11 August 2011
• Scott, I., Yeld, N., Hendry, J. (2007) Higher Education Monitor No 6.
A Case for Improving Teaching and Learning in South African Higher
Education. Pretoria: Council on Higher Education.
•
Hinweis der Redaktion
Higher educators world-wide also tend to fall back on outmoded transmission practices in their teaching, which are out of sync with the informal learning experiences of students (Ramsden, 2011).
Parry, W., “School orders students to remove blogs”. USA Today, 26/10/2005. Downloaded from: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techpolicy/2005-10-26-school-bans-blogs_x.htmThe over-adoption of tools can lead to what has been termed ‘creepy tree house’ syndrome (Stein 2008) when authority is seen to try and invade a young person's social space. There is strong resistance from students to universities and lecturers making formal use of social networks as this is seen as an invasion of their social space (e.g. Madge 2009). When parents and professors start inhabiting these spaces it creates a role conflict (Selwyn 2009) for students, as they struggle to know which face to present and find their communication stifled. These tools may have significant potential for learning, but students don't want them to become the next LMS: organisationally controlled, bland and singular in focus (i.e. teaching). For the teaching function of scholarship then the question is ‘How can educators utilise the potential of these tools without destroying what makes them valuable to students?’ Weller,2011:
The survey has involved designing and prototyping a scoping questionnaire prior to administering this to academics in all HEIs in South Africa to establish current practices regarding emergent technologies to enhance teaching and learning. The online questionnaire comprises of closed and open ended questions. The objective of the survey will be to establish the contexts and conditions that frame current practices of use of emerging technologies within South Africans HEIs.
An online questionnaire was sent to lecturers at HEIs in South Africa who identify themselves as engaged in innovative pedagogical practices using emerging ICTs. The following questions were addressed in the online questionnaire to participants who self-identify as using emerging ICTs to enhance their teaching and learning practices:
An online questionnaire was sent to lecturers at HEIs in South Africa who identify themselves as engaged in innovative pedagogical practices using emerging ICTs. The following questions were addressed in the online questionnaire to participants who self-identify as using emerging ICTs to enhance their teaching and learning practices:
An online questionnaire was sent to lecturers at HEIs in South Africa who identify themselves as engaged in innovative pedagogical practices using emerging ICTs. The following questions were addressed in the online questionnaire to participants who self-identify as using emerging ICTs to enhance their teaching and learning practices: