Conference Papers and Presentations (Education Innovation)

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/2263/7462

For inquiries regarding this collection or items in the collection, please contact Alett Nell
Tel.: +27 12 420 4801/2806

Browse

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5

Supporting lecturers to demystify learning in a science faculty
(Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València, 2018) Louw, Ina
Pedagogical competence is not always part of the skills set of science educators at research intensive universities. Thus, the Academic Developer (AD) in the Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences (NAS) at the University of Pretoria makes use of the Pedagogical Competence Model in order to help develop lecturers’ pedagogical competence. The overall aim of the study is to support lecturers to have a clear focus on student learning; assist them to development their pedagogical skills over time; and to adopt a scholarly approach to teaching and learning. Peer reviews are compulsory for probation candidates (newly appointed) as well as staff applying for promotion. In 2017 a total of 58 lecturers were reviewed by the AD, and 26 of these lecturers completed an online questionnaire that was intended to establish the influence the AD’s reviews had on their teaching practices. Subsequently interventions were planned aligned to the perceived needs for development. The project is still in progress, but results from the 538 members who already received training during 2018 indicate improved understanding of student learning and great appreciation for the support.
Research-informed design : learning to balance the books
(Design, Development and Research Conference, 2011) Oberholster, J.G.I. (Johan Gerhardus Ignatius), 1962-; Design, Development and Research Conference : 2011 : Cape Town; DDR 2011; Nagel, Lynette
There is a great shortage of some professionals like chartered accountants, while the standards of the professional body are relentless in denying the unsuitably qualified. Low pass rates in the first year challenge Higher Education’s eventual delivery of adequate numbers of candidates in order to balance the book of supply and demand. In this paper we outline the results of the research that informed the design and piloting of new teaching initiatives in Financial Accounting, the rationale and instructional design principles behind them, and briefly describe the approaches aimed at increasing the success of first-year students. At the end of 2010, the Department of Financial Accounting sought to uncover the reasons for the unacceptable attrition levels in the first year. Research entailed semi-structured focus-group interviews with students across all levels of achievement. Students also completed a questionnaire consisting of both open-ended and structured questions. The results of this mixed-method investigation were triangulated with a larger longitudinal study of student expectations and experiences in the Faculty. One of the most salient findings was that students had unrealistic perceptions of the subject. What they learnt at school did not prepare them to think wider and to solve problems. Students eschewed the lecturers’ recommended approaches to solving problems because of ill-perceived expertise (based on high marks at school). Students also underestimated the importance of studying the theory of accounting before attempting solutions. The findings of this research provided the second research question that called for learning innovations to address those. The lecturers therefore provided a wish-list that constituted the third research question, namely how to design and implement in a learning management system the required educational innovations. Some of the initiatives that were designed primarily for implementation in the learning management system (LMS) are • a clickable mind-map of all the courses in the 4 years of study, explaining how they articulate horizontally and with the next academic level • a scrolling banner and pop-up windows reminding students to study their theory before attempting problem-solving • online glossaries of terms explaining subject terminology in lay language • a weekly multiple choice test with explanatory feed-back • online tutoring questions-solving in the Discussions. Implementation of the newly designed Accounting pilot course is taking place during 2011 with about 120 students, with some of the practices already being replicated in other classes in this Department.
Quality assurance of web-supported learning: processes, products and services
(Conference on World Wide Web Applications, 2004-08) Fresen, Jill Winifred; jill.fresen@up.ac.za
Quality is an elusive, ill-defined and much debated concept. In the field of higher education, we speak of ‘best practices’, ‘quality learning interventions’, ‘design standards’, ‘quality instructional design’, ‘quality services and products’ etc. How do we interpret quality in the field of e-learning and what practical suggestions will assist e-learning practitioners to continually improve their practice? The case study described in this paper is a self-evaluation exercise in an e-learning service unit at the University of Pretoria. This paper proposes a holistic approach to managing the quality of e-learning projects, with respect to processes, products and services to clients. The basis of the paper is a case study which implemented a formal, online Quality Management System (quality of processes) in e-learning at the University of Pretoria. With respect to the quality of e-learning products, the KEA (pronounced “key”, as in “flea”) model is proposed, based on a synthesis of findings from six well-known examples in the literature. The model presents a set of critical success factors for web-supported learning. Quality of service to lecturers and students was investigated by means of e-learning experience surveys, which inform the feedback loop between product specifications and evaluation of web-supported courses, both formative and summative. The Lecturer Experience survey reports on a small sample of qualitative interviews conducted with 22 lecturers at the university. The Student WebCT Experience survey is administered to students at the end of each semester. A Frustration Index and a Satisfaction Index were calculated using the data from July 2003. These measures are monitored each semester to provide management information, by quantifying the added value that an e-learning production and support unit contributes to the quality of teaching and learning.
Innovative training and support interventions with respect to a commercial learning management system
(Conference on World Wide Web Applications, 2007-09) Fresen, Jill Winifred; Drysdale, Estelle; Kotze, Magdaleen; Jordaan, A.J.J. (Dolf); jill.fresen@up.ac.za; Scheepers, M.D. (Maria Detken)
During 2006, the University of Pretoria embarked on an upgrade from WebCT Campus Edition to WebCT Vista 4, now called the Blackboard learning management system. The customised name for the system at the University of Pretoria is clickUP. The ethos behind the choice of name, besides the incorporation of the UP acronym, is to spread the idea of ‘clicking up’ teaching practice, ‘clicking up’ assessment strategies and ‘clicking up’ with ICTs. The project implementation team followed the recommendations of the WebCT (UK) consultants (Dark & O'Brien, 2005), which included establishing various task teams to handle all aspects of the upgrade. This paper reports on the strategies of the Training and Support task team. Innovations in the training strategy include lunch times sessions, just-in-time and customised training for lecturers, a help website, fact sheets and the use of props, analogies and storytelling during face-to-face training sessions. Participant feedback is exceptionally positive. The main support intervention was the establishment of an e-support office to support lecturers with technical and administrative tasks in the electronic environment and to provide one central point for assistance. The members of the team developed and matured in their understanding and usage of clickUP, including best practices which were incorporated in the training strategy. Important lessons were learned by the instructional design team, which are shared in this paper. It is possible for other training and support teams to modify many of these ideas and resources for their own needs.
A cognitive model to promote excellence in web-supported learning
(Conference on World Wide Web Applications, 2005) Fresen, Jill Winifred; Cronje, Johannes Christoffel; jill.fresen@up.ac.za
The term e-learning embraces the use of a variety of electronic delivery media to facilitate and enhance learning. Examples of various delivery media are online (web-supported), stand-alone multimedia, interactive television, virtual classrooms, video conferencing, etc. This paper focuses on web-supported learning (WSL), as a subset of e-learning. The term web-supported learning is preferred over web-based learning (WBL) or online learning, since the learning model under consideration is a blended one, including varying components of contact time and electronic learning opportunities. Although the domains of quality assurance in higher education and web-supported learning are extremely topical, they seldom overlap (Reid, 2003). The purpose of this study was to investigate factors to promote excellence in web-supported learning (WSL) in higher education institutions. The outcome is a taxonomy of critical success factors, as well as a mapping of the taxonomy onto a cognitive model in the field of Information Science. In the field of Information Science, Ingwersen’s (1996) cognitive model of information retrieval (IR) interaction is well known. It represents the way that individual users may interact with an interface in order to assimilate and interpret sources of information within their social and organisational environments. The taxonomy of critical success factors was mapped onto Ingwersen’s model, in order to provide a cognitive and visual interpretation of the categories in the taxonomy. This offers a unique application of information science theory to the field of web-supported learning.

Browse

Recent Submissions