An investigation into the use of emerging technologies to transform teaching and

learning across differently positioned higher education institutions in South Africa

Vivienne BozalekUniversity of the Western Cape

South Africavbozalek@uwc.ac.za

Introduction

• Background and contextualisation of the project

• The research project itself• Where we are at with the project currently

and future plans

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

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

12% of the world's population enter tertiary education

Thanks to Prof Brian O’ Connell for use of this slide

2.4% of Africans enter tertiary education

Thanks to Prof Brian O’ Connell for use of this slide

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.

Thanks to Prof Brian O’ Connell for use of this slide

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

Thanks to Prof Brian O’ Connell for use of this slide

World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report (Cape Times, Business Report 10 Sept 2010)

Goal 2: Graduate Success & achievement of Attributes

04/10/2023

• 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.

South African 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.

SA concerns in higher education

• 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)

The importance of addressing the problem in the current context

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)

What institutions are using…

What are students using?

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

The Research Team Members(May 2011)

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

Meeting in November 2011 of Emerging Technologies Research Team- further incorporation of potential PhD students for project

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?

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?

Phase 1 of Project - SurveyEthics clearanceLiterature reviews and theoretical frameworks – CHATSurvey of Emerging Technologies and Teaching and Learning Practices in SA HEIsThis 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

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?

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?

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

See more information on our project on our blog:

http://emergingicts.blogspot.com/

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.

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