The STARS project aims to capacitate and support early career academics (those who have completed their PhDs in the past 3-5 years) in research skills. This project is led by the Association for Commonwealth of Universities (ACU) who collaboratively works with distinguished researchers from twelve African universities, including the University of Cape Town. Through the STARS programme (which is currently being piloted over a period of twelve months), the researchers (known as Module Leaders) develop content for and offer nine research related modules. Twelve early career academics have been recruited from the twelve respective universities, to participate in the programme.

The Learning Technologies Team’s role is to: 1) provide advice and support to the Module Leaders on online learning design and facilitation; and 2) provide technical advice to the project stakeholders and participants, at large, as in the diagram below. After some deliberations around technology choices and comparison of technology affordances, STARS runs its online seminars on Adobe Connect and supports online learning via Vula.