OpenUCT :: Browsing by Department "CILT"

Browsing by Department "CILT"

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Open Access
Activists within the academy: the role of prior experience in adult learners' acquisition of postgraduate literacies in a postapartheid South African university
(SAGE, 2011) Cooper, Linda
The article takes as a case study a group of disability rights activists who were given access to a master's program via Recognition of Prior Learning. The question explored is "Can adult learners' prior experiential knowledge act as a resource for the successful acquisition of postgraduate academic literacy practices?" The analysis is framed theoretically by Bourdieu's notions of habitus, capital, and field. It is argued that adult learners' acquisition of postgraduate literacies is an outcome of the interplay between three factors: (a) student habitus and dispositions, (b) pedagogic agency, and (c) the nature of the disciplinary field. Although the program under investigation made complex demands on students, lecturers' understanding of student habitus enabled students' prior experiential knowledge to be tapped as a resource. However, students also exercised agency in negotiating the forms of academic habitus acquired, and the trajectory of their agency involved a mix of accommodation, resistance, and challenge.
Open Access
Adjusting pedagogy to optimise negotiability and interactivity in lessons using the interactive whiteboard an action research study in a primary school
(2012) Jaftha, Cheryl; Hodgkinson-Williams, Cheryl
One of the recent technological devices that have been introduced in the educational domain is the interactive whiteboard (IWB). IWBs have become established teaching and learning tools, particularly in primary school classrooms in developed English speaking countries and have more recently been deployed in developing countries such as South Africa. The Western Cape Province in South Africa has rolled out a province-wide IWB programme over the last decade, despite limited local research on the pedagogical value of IWBs in South African schools. This research study aims to investigate how the IWB can be used to encourage collaboration amongst the learners in a Grade 6 Technology Education class at a primary school in the Western Cape and specifically to assist the teacher in understanding how her pedagogy needs to change to optimise learner collaboration in association with an IWB. To understand the ways in which the IWB influences the activities in the classroom, Activity Theory is used as a framework to understand the tensions that arise and how the teacher needs to change her pedagogical strategies to successfully resolve these tensions.
Open Access
Barriers to students' use of electronic resources during lectures
(South African Institute of Computer Scientists, 2008) Ng'ambi, Dick; Rambe, Patient
This paper highlights one of the barriers for implementing an educational technology policy at a higher education institution. As more courses use a Learning Management System (LMS), learning resources are electronic and an increasing number of students are using Notebook computers for accessing electronic resources and reading on the screen. However, there is a dichotomy between provision of electronic resources and students being allowed to use Notebooks during classes. This paper explores lecturers' ambivalence towards student use of Notebooks during classes and illustrates how such perceptions are becoming a barrier to successful implementation of an educational technology policy.
Open Access
Bridging distance between actual and potential development: a case of using ICT mediated consultation tool
(Springer, 2009) Ng'ambi, Dick; Goodman, Suki
It is an ongoing challenge in higher education context to design appropriate learning tasks for students that balances the diversity in student knowledge and variable skills with student's potential to learn under guidance. Obtaining feedback from students on what they know is made more complicated when students are passive during learning activities. In this paper we report on a project that ran over 2 years in which 67 students (28 in 2005; 39 in 2006) from culturally diverse socio-historical backgrounds used an anonymous knowledge sharing tool, the dynamic frequently asked questions (DFAQ) to engage with authentic learning tasks in an Organisational Learning Module. The module was part of the Organisational Psychology honours degree programme at a higher learning institution. The students used the DFAQ tool to consult with both peers and faculty staff. DFAQ is a special purpose web-based tool with a Short Message Services (SMS) interface. A thematic analysis was conducted on students' experiences gathered from focus group discussions. Artefacts from DFAQ are also analysed. The paper reports that DFAQ mediated the educator's access to the students' level of understanding and the potential to learn under guidance. The DFAQ tool therefore allowed the educator to provide students with appropriate guidance that met individual students' knowledge gaps. The paper concludes that DFAQ mediated access to the gap between actual and potential development, stimulated knowledge sharing, peer learning and impacted on pedagogical designs of learning tasks.
Open Access
Changing Centres of Teaching and Learning an analytical review
(UCT, 2021) Czerniewicz, Laura
This analytical review reflects on the ways that centres for teaching and learning in universities are formulated and how they might change to best respond to and address the changing needs of students, academics and institutions in a post pandemic era. Drawing on discussions with experts, personal experience and grey literature, the key considerations to be addressed are articulated, in order to spell out the options for CTLs in a variety of contexts
Open Access
Collaborative open textbook creation: Perspectives on student involvement
(Digital Open Textbooks for Development, 2022-10) Cox, Glenda; Willmers, Michelle; Masuku, Bianca
This is a presentation given by members of the Digital Open Textbooks for Development (DOT4D) initiative at the Open Education Conference in October 2022.
Open Access
Collaborative open textbook creation: Perspectives on student involvement
(Digital Open Textbooks for Development, 2022-11) Cox, Glenda; Lapperman, James; Malandu, Vimbai; Phala, Gift
This is a presentation given by the PI of the Digital Open Textbooks for Development (DOT4D) initiative, Dr. Glenda Cox, alongside Dr James Lapperman and two student collaborators at the UCT Teaching and Learning Conference (TLC) in November 2022.
Open Access
Communicating your findings in engineering education: the value of making your theoretical perspective explicit
(Taylor & Francis, 2009) Jawitz, Jeff; Case, Jennifer
The authors observe that many research papers in engineering education do not explicitly state the theoretical perspective underpinning their work. In this article they argue for the value of theory in assisting researchers in communicating their research findings. Three theoretical perspectives that can be used to support one's research are described, namely; positivism, constructivism and critical inquiry, and in each case examples of research questions that best match the particular framework are given. Researchers are advised to be aware of the limitations of each perspective and to use the one that best assists them in understanding and solving the problems they wish to address.
Open Access
Decolonizing Learning in the Global South: Opportunities and Challenges in Higher Education
(Digital Open Textbooks for Development, 2022-10) Cox, Glenda; Masuku, Bianca; Willmers, Michelle
A panel presentation for the Open Education Conference 2022 by the Digital Open Textbooks for Development (DOT4D) team at UCT with collaborators from Yusuf Maitama Sule University in Kano, Nigeria and Chinoyi University of Technology in Zimbabwe.
Open Access
Defining innovation: using soft systems methodology to approach the complexity of innovation in educational technology
(University of the West Indies, 2010) Cox, Glenda
This paper explores what educational technologists in one South African Institution consider innovation to be. Ten educational technologists in various faculties across the university were interviewed and asked to define and answer questions about innovation. Their answers were coded and the results of the overlaps in coding have been assimilated into a definition. Soft systems methodology (SSM) was used as a method to make visible the complex nature of innovation in educational technology in one setting. The initial definition formed the 'situation definition' in SSM terms. The method proved useful in producing a picture (based on rich pictures drawn by each person) and a root definition (based on CATWOE, a mnemonic that enables the interviewer to ask each participant to identify processes and role players). Participants discussed changes in processes, structures and attitudes at the institution.
Open Access
Developing communities of practice within and outside higher education institutions
(Wiley, 2007) Hodgkinson-Williams, Cheryl; Slay, Hannah; Siebörger, Ingrid
Higher education institutions (HEIs) are largely built on the assumption that learning is an individual process best encouraged by explicit teaching that is, on the whole, separated from social engagement with those outside the university community. This perspective has been theoretically challenged by those who argue for a social constructivist learning theory and a more collaborative approach to learning. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) afford lecturers and students an opportunity for extending the boundaries of a learning experience, not merely beyond the lone individual, but beyond the limits of discipline boundaries within a specific university community and beyond the institution into the local community. This paper illustrates how a collaborative effort between lecturers and students from the Computer Science and Education Departments at Rhodes University, teachers from the local community, the provincial Department of Education and a non-governmental organisation developed into an unfolding virtual and physical community of practice which enabled ICT take-up in a number of schools in the Grahamstown District, South Africa. This discussion of what has become known as the e-Yethu project provides an example of how ICTs, underpinned by the insights of social constructivism, the notion of 'community of practice' and in particular Hoadley and Kilner's C4P Framework for Communities of Practice, can serve to help HEIs understand ways in which ICTs can provide opportunities for developing collaborative learning within HEIs, and between the HEI and the local community.
Open Access
The development of agency in first generation learners in higher education: a social realist analysis
(Taylor & Francis, 2009) Luckett, Kathy; Luckett, Thembi
This paper reports on the findings of a formative evaluation of the mentorship support programme run by the Maskh'iSizwe Centre of Excellence for recipients of its bursaries. Learning theory traditions have typically been divided into those that prioritise individual cognition versus those that prioritise the context in which learning occurs. In both these traditions, the individual agent is dissolved. This paper interrogates the ontological assumptions held by dominant learning theories regarding relations between individual and society that neglect agency in the learning process. Archer's social realist ontology offers a way forward by reinstating the full properties and powers of learners as agents. Archer's social theory supports theories of learning that emphasise ontology and practice, as well as epistemology. It is therefore suggested that support programmes for undergraduate financially disadvantaged learners ensure that they first develop a sense of personal identity and social agency as a pre-condition for succeeding academically and developing a professional identity.
Open Access
Digital Open Textbooks for Development Apereo19
(Digital Open Textbooks for Development, 2019-04) Willmers, Michelle
Presentation by Digital Open Textbooks for Development (DOT4D) Publishing and Implementation Manager, Michelle Willmers, to the Apereo Africa Conference 2019, University of Cape Town.
Open Access
Digital Open Textbooks for Development OER19
(2019-04) Cox, Glenda; Willmers, Michelle; Masuku, Bianca
This presentation reports on preliminary findings from DOT4D research, providing an overview of the project’s working conceptual framework which draws upon Nancy Fraser’s theorising on social justice (2005) and Margaret Archer’s (2000) conceptualisation of agency. It will also provide early insights gained from the project’s grants initiative and advocacy interactions, addressing the question of what interventions are required within the South African higher education system to promote open textbook production that supports curriculum transformation, intersectionality, affordable access and long-term sustainability.
Open Access
Digital Open Textbooks for Development: Broadening access and supporting curriculum transformation at UCT
(Digital Open Textbooks for Development, 2018-07) Cox, Glenda; Willmers, Michelle
A presentation by Digital Open Textbooks for Development (DOT4D) Principal Investigator, Glenda Cox, and Publishing and Implementation Manager, Michelle Willmers, at the UCT Teaching and Learning Conference in July 2018.
Open Access
Digital Open Textbooks for Development: Collaborative, sustainable models for transformation and student involvement
(Digital Open Textbooks for Development, 2022-06) Cox, Glenda; Willmers, Michelle
This is a panel presentation from the Siyaphumelela Conference that took place in June 2022 titled “All About OER Textbooks”
Open Access
Digital Open Textbooks for Development: Collaborative, sustainable models for transformation and student involvement
(Digital Open Textbooks for Development, 2022-06) Cox, Glenda; Willmers, Michelle
This is a panel presentation by the Digital Open Textbook for Development (DOT4D) initiative members Dr Glenda Cox and Michelle Willmers at the Siyaphumelela Conference in June 2022.
Open Access
Digital open textbooks for social justice: Collaboration and student co-creation
(Digital Open Textbooks for Development, 2023-03) Cox, Glenda; Masuku, Bianca; Willmers, Michelle
This is a presentation by members of the Digital Open Textbooks for Development (DOT4D) initiative, Dr Glenda Cox, Bianca Masuku and Michelle Willmers, at the UCT Open Textbook Conversation event as part of Open Education Week in March 2023.
Open Access
DOT4D Open Textbook Landscape Survey Report: University of Cape Town
(Digital Open Textbooks for Development, 2021-07) Masuku, Bianca
The Digital Open Textbooks for Development (DOT4D) project in the Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching at the University of Cape Town aims to better understand the affordances of open textbook publishing. This report presents findings from the DOT4D landscape survey which served to capture the institutional open textbook publishing terrain in order to gain a sense of current open textbook production and publication activity taking place within the university.
Restricted
DOT4D UCT Open Textbook Conversation: Part 1
(Digital Open Textbooks for Development, 2019-08) Cox, Glenda; Willmers, Michelle; Masuku, Bianca
At the University of Cape Town (UCT), an institution which is grappling with decolonisation and transformation of the curriculum, there is an array of imperatives which is driving academics to produce open textbooks – an activity which appears to be on the increase despite current challenges related to lack of institutional reward, pressures related to time constraints and the need for better articulated quality assurance mechanisms. In order to address the issue of institutional support for open textbook publishing, surface current models of open textbook production and contribute towards the development of a community of practice, the DOT4D project hosted the UCT Open Textbook Conversation event with academics, students and institutional managers with an interest in open textbook production.