Conference Publications

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ARHAP International Colloquium: Collection of Concept Papers
(University of Cape Town, 2007) African Religious Health Assets Programme
ARHAP INTERNATIONAL COLLOQUIUM 2007, Collection of Concept Papers
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Doing it for themselves? How South African universitystudents learn to use computers for their studies
(Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2008) Brown, Cheryl; Czerniewicz, Laura; Pedersen, Jacob
Globally universities are grappling with how they should be adapting to the new generation of university students who are purported to be “tech savvy” and to learn indifferent ways. The South African higher education sector, with its changing and increasingly diverse student body, is facing similar concerns. This preliminary study seeks to inform this issue by investigating what computer experience academics can expect students to have, how students learn to use computers, how they solve problem sand how they acquire new computer skills. We find differences in age and experience and suggest that whilst there is a small distinct group of students who show the characteristics of the “digital native”, there is much diversity in how students come to learn and continue to learn about computers. We observe too that although younger students of all levels of experience are learning informally, universities still have a very important role to play in terms of training and support.
Open Access
‘Researching practice': a first step in evaluating the complex practices in a university-community ‘Knowledge Co-op'
(2012-05) McMillan, Janice; Schmid, Barbara; Goodman, Suki; Mpofu-Makamanzi, Buhle
Paper presented at the 5th Living Knowledge conference, Bonn, 10-12 May 2012.
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Power and Politics in a changing scholarly communication landscape
(Purdue University Libraries, 2013) Czerniewicz, Laura
In recent times the nature of scholarship has both remained consistent to its core principles, and undergone profound changes. Despite numerous high-flown claims, no-one knows how these will play out. This paper describes the digitally-mediated changes which are in process throughout the familiar scholarly cycle, and considers the issues – including for librarians, curators and scholars - which arise from these changes.
Open Access
‘Being parties in the work’: A view of the changing digitally-mediated teaching and learning landscape
(Heltasa, 2013-10-28) Czerniewicz, Laura
This presentation outlines the changing and diverse nature of the higher education landscape in South Africa in 2013, with a focus on how technology usage is changing and can potentially continue to transform educational practice, both to increase the effectiveness and scope of higher education instruction.
Open Access
Degrees of ease: adoption of OER, open textbooks and MOOCs in the Global South
(University of Cape Town, 2014-06-25) Hodgkinson-Williams, Cheryl
Internationally, education institutions are under a great deal of pressure to provide rising numbers of students with access to quality education in increasingly economically constrained environments. For some time now, the affordances provided by the internet have enabled a range of educational activities to be supported digitally or conducted online. Three fairly new forms of web-enabled activities that are receiving attention are Open Educational Resources (OER), Open Textbooks, and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). OERs and Open Textbooks have been hailed as a response to the demand for provision of flexible and cost-effective learning materials, while MOOCs have been touted as an answer to the provision of up-to-date and cost-effective tuition for growing numbers of students in so-called ‘developing countries’, or what I shall refer to as the Global South. This paper will offer a definition of these forms of teaching provision and learning support within the context of “Open Education” and identify the key activities underlying OER, Open Textbooks and MOOCs. It will interrogate the factors that seem to influence the ease with which educators and students in the Global South can contribute to or adapt existing materials and/or tuition to suit their contexts as a way to avoid any possible “neo-colonization and one-way flow of content based on the massive amount of content published by those in richer nations” (Amiel 2013: 127).
Open Access
Admitting engineering students with the best chance of success: technological literacy and the Technological Profile Inventory (TPI)
(South African Society for Engineering Education, 2014-09-23) Luckay, Melanie B; Collier-Reed, Brandon I
In this article we describe the development and validation of an instrument – the Technological Profile Inventory (TPI). The instrument can be used to determine whether an applicant’s level of technological literacy is suitable for admission to an engineering programme. It might be argued that students entering an engineering programme should demonstrate a level of technological literacy, not sought during the admission process at most universities in South Africa, which rely primarily on the National Benchmark Testing instrument and the National Senior Certificate examination results. The items used in the TPI were drawn from a previous study (Collier-Reed, 2006) and were based on a rigorous qualitative analysis of interview data which was in turn informed by categories that emerged from a phenomenographic analysis. Data were collected from 198 Engineering and 237 Commerce students and the items subjected to exploratory factor analysis and Cronbach alpha testing. The result of the analysis was a modified version of the TPI where the data were found to be reliable and valid. The significant factors that defined the ‘nature of technology’ were found to be the view of technology as either an artefact or related to a process, while those constituting ‘interaction with technological artefacts’ were direction and tinkering. A cohort analysis suggests that the anecdotal view of the possible difference in technological literacy between Commerce and Engineering students is supported by the data – Commerce students are statistically more likely to view technology as an artefact and interact with technological artefacts only when directed to do so, a less technologically literate position. Further work involves determining how to meaningfully combine the scores achieved by an individual completing the TPI to ultimately determine a score indicative of their applicable level of technological literacy.
Open Access
The development and validation of an instrument — the Technological Profile Inventory — to determine students’ levels of technological literacy in South Africa
(International Association of Technology, Education and Development, 2014-09-23) Luckay, Melanie B; Collier-Reed, Brandon I
In this article we describe the development and validation of an instrument – the technological profile inventory (TPI). The instrument can be used to determine students’ level of technological literacy. The items used in the TPI were drawn from a previous study (Collier-Reed, 2006) and were based on a rigorous qualitative analysis of interview data which was in turn informed by categories that emerged from a phenomenographic analysis. Data were collected from four groups of students, three groups of first year students at university Engineering (167), Commerce (65), Arts (218), and one group of high school students (179). The students’ responses to the TPI were subjected to exploratory factor analysis and Cronbach alpha testing, as well as a one-way multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA). The result of the analysis was a modified version of the TPI where the data were found to be reliable and valid. The significant factors that defined the ‘nature of technology’ were found to be the view of technology as either an Artefact or related to a Process, while those constituting ‘interaction with technological artefacts’ were Direction/Instruction and Tinkering. A cohort analysis suggests Engineering students are statistically more likely to view technology as a process and interact with technological artefacts with less fear and more likely through self-initiation (Tinkering) – a more advanced technologically literate position. On the other hand the Arts students are more likely to expect direction or instruction from an authority figure (Direction/Instruction) when interacting with a technological artefact - a less technologically literate position. Further work involves determining how to meaningfully combine the scores achieved by an individual completing the TPI to ultimately determine a score indicative of their applicable level of technological literacy.
Open Access
Validating an instrument for use in assessing the technological literacy of upper secondary school students
(South African Association of Research in Mathematics, Science and Technology Education, 2014-09-23) Luckay, Melanie B; Collier-Reed, Brandon I
In this paper an instrument for assessing upper secondary school students‘ levels of technological literacy is presented. The items making up the instrument emerged from a previous study that used a phenomenographic research approach to explore students‘ conceptions of technological literacy in terms of their understanding of the nature of technology and their interaction with technological artefacts. The instrument was validated through administration to 969 students on completion of their 12 years of formal schooling. A factor analysis and Cronbach alpha reliability co-efficient was conducted on the data and the results show that a four-dimension factor structure (namely, Artefact, Process, Direction/Instruction, and Tinkering) strongly supported the dimensions as developed during the original phenomenographic study. The Cronbach alpha reliability co-efficient of each dimension was satisfactory. Based on these findings, the instrument has been shown to be valid and reliable and can be used with confidence.
Open Access
Technological literacy and reflection in the classroom
(European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction (Earli), 2014-09-23) Ingerman, Ake; Collier-Reed, Brandon I
In this article we take a theoretical model that describes technological literacy as being enacted by individuals in the course of shaping their lives and the world around them and explore how it is possible to develop meaningful and effective educational classroom activities that intertwine capabilities with technological processes in authentic situations. Technological literacy involves the enactment and shaping of the technological process in such a way that enactment successively recognises the original need as well as a shared purpose and potential consequences – an action that we argue to be reflective, or mindful, in nature. We suggest that two elements of knowledge can be identified as goals for technology education. Firstly, a basic understanding of technological processes, a capability to orient in the landscape of relevant knowledge, and the knowledge contexts of what the process is about. Secondly, reflection on process development, (shared) purpose, underlying needs, necessary competence, consequences, and personal engagement intertwined with enactment. Here the notion of reflection-in-action as the manifestation of a mindful relationship between experience and enactment can be seen as driving the technological process. We argue that the ultimate and proximate purposes of teaching are useful constructs for discussing the constitution of continuity between objectives in classroom activities. An analysis of data from a Swedish technology education classroom is used to illustrate the argument developed. The article concludes by suggesting that focus must be centred on what activities are meaningful – and as far as possible authentic – for pupils as aims for learning.
Open Access
A curriculum framework for flexible engineering degrees in South Africa
(Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (Scotland), 2014-09-23) Grayson, Diane; Collier-Reed, Brandon I; Pearce, Howard; Shay, Suellen
South Africa produces too few engineers to meet its development needs. The number of graduating engineers is slowly increasing, but is still only about 2000 per year, serving a population of over 50 million. Data from the Council on Higher Education (CHE 2013) show that for the 2005 cohort of BEng students nationally only 25% obtained an engineering degree in the regulation time of four years, with another 19% taking five years. In a study for the Engineering Council of South Africa on improving throughput (Fisher 2011), one suggestion was to increase curriculum flexibility to better cater for the needs of a diverse student population. As part of a CHE project, we developed exemplar curricula for engineering degrees designed to take either four or five years to complete. In this paper we describe the underpinning principles that guided the design and illustrate how they are applied in curriculum exemplars for a mechanical engineering degree.
Open Access
Sustaining OER at the University of Cape Town: free, but not cheap
(Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Open Universiteit Nederland and Brigham Young University, 2014-11-05) Hodgkinson-Williams, Cheryl; Donnelly, Shihaam
Paper focusing on open educational resources (OERs) at UCT. OER initiatives have moved from a fringe activity to a key component in both teaching and learning in higher education and in the fulfilling the universities' mission and goals. Reduction in the cost of materials is yet to be realised in practice make it necessary to consider various strategies for new OER initiatives e.g. the OpenContent directory at UCT. This paper reviews the range of sustainability strategies mentioned in the literature, plots the results of a small-scale OER sustainability survey against these strategies and explains how these findings and other papers on OER initiatives were used to inform an in-house workshop at UCT to deliberate the future strategy for the sustainability of OER at UCT.
Open Access
Considering inequality as Higher Education goes online
(Association for Learning Technology, 2015) Czerniewicz, Laura
This presentation explores the ways in which inequality manifests as the higher education sector increasingly moves to online and digitally-mediated forms of delivery.
Open Access
Quantitative literacy practices in civil engineering study: designs for teaching and learning
(Aalborg Universitetsforlag, 2016) Prince, Robert; Simpson, Zach
Higher education needs to produce increasing numbers of good quality graduates. Included herein is the need for graduates that can engage in high level quantitative literacy practices, which requires designs for learning that understand how texts are constructed through language, images and mathematical notation, which together form the meaning-making repertoire of quantitative literacy. This paper applies a framework for quantitative literacy events in the analysis of a particular graphical procedure used during undergraduate civil engineering courses throughout South Africa. The framework draws on the New Literacies Studies’ view of literacy as social practice and examines the specific practices that students need to engage with during individual quantitative literacy events. Application of the framework demonstrates that such graphical procedures constitute quantitative literacy events in which students engage in various quantitative practices, the implications of which inform designs for learning in civil engineering in several key respects.
Open Access
MOOC-making: What is has meant to CILT
(University of Cape Town, 2016) Czerniewicz, Laura
Discussion of the process of making Massive Online Open Courses from both the academics' and supporting institution's perspectives.
Open Access
Challenging Open Education
(Asian Association of Open Universities, 2016) Czerniewicz, Laura
This presentation focuses on critiquing some of the assumptions about Open Education as a response to global educational challenges. It was presented at the 30th Annual Conference of the Asian Association of Open Universities in Manila, Philippines.
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Safe paraffin appliances and their contribution to demand side management
(Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2016-01-28) Lloyd, P; Truran, G
Many accidents have resulted from using of paraffin as a fuel for cooking and heating. These accidents were caused because of leaks and the paraffin appliances could consequently burst into violent flames. As a result, compulsory standards for the construction and operation of these appliances have been introduced, and the sale of the unsafe appliances has been banned. Safe paraffin appliances could contribute to the management of the electrical demand. Domestic cooking makes up about 4% of the total demand during the daily peak in electricity consumption. The widespread introduction of safe paraffin cookers to replace electrical cookers would save about 1 500MW. It would cost about R25bn to install generating capacity of that magnitude. Replacing electrical stoves would cost about R8bn.
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Assessment of perceived characteristics of solar lamps in Khayelitsha
(IEEE, 2016-02-17) Reckson, S; Madhlopa, A
Energy plays a vital role in the socio-economic development of any nation. Nevertheless, many people do not have access to modern energy services for lighting or other applications. Solar lamps are an innovation of modern lighting services for low-income households. In spite of the benefits associated with the adoption of solar lamps there have been few attempts for the diffusion of this technology among South Africa residences. The objective of this study was to assess perceived characteristics of solar lamps from persons in non-electrified households in Khayelitsha, Cape Town (South Africa). Such households rely predominantly on paraffin lamps and candles for lighting. The authors wished to assess public perceived characteristics of solar lamps (relative advantage, compatibility, complexity and affordability in a preliminary persuasive stage). Primary data was collected through use of a structured questionnaire (respondents completed 26). Each response - from `strongly disagree' to `strongly agree' received an integer score of 1 to 5. In addition, data reliability was determined by using Cronbach's Alpha. Results indicated most respondents perceived solar lamps as more advantageous, compatible and affordable than paraffin lamps and candles. Answers swayed more towards `disagree' on the complexity of the technology. The values of alpha ranged from 0.46 (for affordability) to 0.84 (for relative advantage, indicating solar lamps had a significant perceived relative advantage over paraffin lamps and candles.
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An economic framework for energy transitions
(Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2016-02-19) Howells, Mark; Louw, Kate; Conradie, Beatrice; Käck, Emila; Jonsson, Sandra
There is special interest in the patterns of fuel use among low-income rural communities and their transition from one form of energy use pattern to another. Understanding energy transitions will help in developing energy policies for the poor and promoting new energy markets that will improve their household budgets. Energy suppliers, such as utilities, would be better able to work in low-income communities for their mutual benefit. Households could benefit from more convenient and healthier forms of energy. This paper develops a simple micro-economic framework describing aspects of energy supply and use in lowincome settings. We assume that consumer utility is the driver of transitions, subject to fuel-appliance availability and budget constraints. We explore the hypothesis that reductions in “market failure” often help to encourage energy transitions.
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A study of demand side potential in South African industries
(Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2016-02-23) Hughes, A; Howells, M; Trikam, A; Kenny, A; van ES, D
This paper looks at the potential for demand side management (DSM) in nine industries in South Africa. The DSM potential of the industries was assessed through audits and by examining the load profiles of the industries. The DSM options considered were either an improvement in energy efficiency or the shifting of electricity use to outside of the Eskom peak. DSM options that would negatively affect production were not considered. The paper introduces the study, explains why certain industries were selected as case studies and briefly summarises the findings at each site.

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