Past CILT Events

15 Aug 2017

Engaging with the assessment of student work in an online or blended space

This webinar will focus on the following three challenges/issues:

• ‘Doing assessment’ online - is it a case of transferring face-to-face assessment to an online environment?
• The affordances and challenges of online assessment - a continuum from formative to summative assessment?
• Online assessment practices - issues of purpose; format; grading; feedback; teaching and learning

Link to Presentation slides and recording: Online Course Design module D webinar Oct 2017 and  University Course Design webinar formative assessment and link to recording.

Taking a closer look at students’ access to disciplinary discourses: Implications for academics’ teaching and assessment practices Seminar.

This seminar attempts to stimulate discussions around matters pertaining to academic literacies and disciplinary discourses, and what these mean for our teaching and assessment practices. In this seminar, Bongi draws on findings from two longitudinal studies on undergraduate students’ experiences as they attempt to become legitimate members of their academic disciplines. Drawing on an Academic Literacies framework, she discusses some of the challenges experienced by these students as they navigate several transitions (from high school to first year, first year to second and third year) and disciplinary discourses. As part of this seminar, participants will discuss ways in which their teaching and assessment practices can respond to students' challenges with disciplinary discourses.

Date: Thursday, 12 October 2017
Time : 13:00 – 14:00

Venue : Green Meeting Room, CILT, Level 7, P D Hahn Building, Upper Campus

Facilitating Online Learning

A growing number of blended and online courses are using online resources and interaction to support student learning. Effective online learning by students requires effective online facilitation by educators. This short workshop is about how we support engaged learning by students across a range of online conversational spaces within and beyond formal course sites. The workshop will involve conceptual and experiential learning. 

You will learn about:
1) Challenges involved in taking learning interactions online
2) Some principles of online facilitation 
3) Tools used for online communication in courses
4) Some strategies to support engagement in online learning

Link to presentation slides

Educating Accounting Professionals: investigating the relevance of an overloaded curriculum

This seminar will focus on the investigation of, complex accounting and business transactions, and calls for employability of students that require curriculum design considerations that will address relevance for the South African economy today.

These challenges raise the question: is the current curriculum still relevant for a professional accounting qualification, given the challenges (such as calls for a decolonised curriculum and providing epistemological access) in higher education in South Africa? In this study the current curriculum outlines, entrance requirements and outcomes of a professionally (SAICA) accredited B Com degree at five institutions in South Africa are investigated and compared, with the aim to identify commonalities, differences and gaps in the curriculum outlines. Bernstein’s (2000) concepts of classification and framing are used as a theoretical framework, with a focus on four analytical categories:

1.         selection (what is taught?),
2.         pacing (how much?),
3.         sequence (what order?) and
4.         evaluation (what counts?).

The analysis highlights the density of the curriculum, the strong control by the profession on the selection of content (what is taught) and the prescriptive structure of the curriculum regarding the sequence of courses, pre-requisites and outcomes.

Date: Thursday, 17 August 2017
Time : 13:00 – 14:00

Venue : Green Meeting Room (7.63), CILT, Level 7, P D Hahn Building, Upper Campus

Link to presentation slides and Link to presentation recording 

Lecturers have used different pedagogical strategies to facilitate participation and enhance learning of students who are at different levels of study. At this session, two lecturers will be sharing about their teaching practices. 

Model for supporting students in Anatomy and Physiology – Dr Amaal Abrahams

As lecturers, we assume that 1st year students have the foundational knowledge developed in school to build upon. Given the variation in the South African schooling system we challenge this assumption as a number of Anatomy and Physiology students consider the course to be content heavy and conceptually complex. One hundred and thirty-four (134) 1st year students in the Anatomy and Physiology course participated in an online assessment to measure their foundational knowledge of life sciences at the start of their academic year. Based on the results of the assessment, students “at risk” were encouraged to participate in peer-facilitated tutorials. This presentation showcases how peer-facilitated tutorials helped improve “at risk” students’ pass rate in the course.

Date: Thursday, 11 May 2017
Time : 13:00 – 14:00

Venue : Green Meeting Room (7.63), CILT, Level 7, P D Hahn Building, Upper Campus

Link to video recording and slides of this presentation

Facilitating classroom participation via a free, mobile-based application - Dr Paul Steyn

Lecturers have used different pedagogical strategies to facilitate participation and enhance learning of students who are at different levels of study. At this session, two lecturers will be sharing about their teaching practices.

Participation is paramount to teaching and learning in the classroom. Many available technology-based systems are expensive and require specialized equipment. However, a free, mobile-based application has been implemented in some lectures. It allows the real-time answering of polls and questionnaires by students. Results are displayed instantly. The lecturer is able to author questions ahead of time or on the fly. This session demonstrates how the application is used and its easy-to- learn functions.

Date: Thursday, 11 May 2017
Time : 13:00 – 14:00

Venue : Green Meeting Room(7.63, CILT, Level 7, P D Hahn Building, Upper Campus

Link to video recording and slides of this presentation

Introduction to Teaching in Higher Education

This series of five sessions offers an introductory perspective to key issues in the current teaching and learning landscape. The sessions may be attended individually, or as a series. The series is intended to support the initial engagement of tutors, teaching assistants or educators.

Time: Mondays, 13:00-14:00
Venue:  CILT Green Room (7.63), Level 7, PD Hahn Building, Upper Campus

15 Aug - Exploring the higher education context
22 Aug - Learning theories as a tool
29 Aug - Instruction and Pedagogic strategies
05 Sep - Key debates in Assessment Theory
12 Sep - Planning for Evaluation

Reflections on using videos as a learning tool: Documenting vulnerability through digital storytelling

This presentation looks at the experience of getting 3rd year Environmental and Geographical Science students to produce videos as part of their practical sessions. The tool of digital storytelling was used by groups of students to produce videos that captured the story of one person or group’s vulnerability to an environmental or health stress. Students were expected to find their own subjects to interview for the video. All the videos were shown at a class “video festival”, where the videos were evaluated by the student groups and a group of lecturers. Individual questionnaires were completed after the video exercise and then a practical session was spent reflecting on the process. Both of these sets of reflections, along with the lecturers input, have helped uncover the challenges and strengths of the video exercise.

This seminar will be presented by Gina Ziervogel.

Date: Tuesday, 21 June, 1-2PM
Venue: CILT Green Room (7.63), Level 7, PD Hahn Building, Upper Campus

Link to video recording and PowerPoint slides of this presentation

*Please note that this seminar has been postponed*

e-Portfolios in Higher Education classes

ePortfolios have been used in Higher Education for more than a decade for course assessments and to support the accreditation of professional degrees. More recently, ePortfolios have been used to prepare students for the workplace and allows them to showcase graduate attributes. This workshop will consider the development opportunities that ePortfolios as both a technology and an approach can offer  improve learning opportunities and experiences for students.ePortfolios allow students to curate different forms of evidence using a variety of media in an online space. What makes ePortfolios unique are their portability and the ability to tell a story about one’s learning journey in a time-stamped way that a paper portfolio is often unable to do. They can also be shared online with an audience beyond the University, such as with potential employers.

We will locate ourselves and interests in relation to a spectrum of broad uses of ePortfolios, followed by more targeted considerations:

• Whether ePortfolios will offer added value in your course?
• What to think about when choosing a tool to create an ePortfolio?
• How to integrate the use of ePortfolios to support course objectives and assessment?

*Please note that this seminar has been postponed*

31 May - e-Assessment Seminar and Workshop 31 May and 2 June

This two-part offering will focus on the contemporary affordances and challenges of assessing students and student work in the online learning environment.

The first part (Tuesday 31 May from 13h00 - 14h00 in the Green Room, PD Hahn Building) will focus on the overarching issues that are and should be of interest to us all:

• The higher education environment and the need for e-learning policy
• The extent to which policy can support and provide the enabling conditions for e-learning and e-assessment
• Policy and the regulatory environment
• The extent to which policy supports or interacts with contemporary online teaching and learning issues, such as the ‘unbundling’ of higher education teaching and learning and the offerings of private higher education online learning providers

The second part of the offering (Thursday 2 June from 11h00 - 13h00 in 3A, Hoerikwaggo Building) will focus on e-assessment practices and address the following questions:

• ‘Doing assessment’ online - is it a case of transferring face-to-face assessment to an online environment?
• The affordances and challenges of online assessment - a continuum from formative to summative assessment?
• Online assessment practices - issues of purpose; format; grading; feedback; teaching and learning

Associate Professors Laura Czerniewicz and Alan Cliff will facilitate the seminar and workshop. Laura will enable the broad policy discussion and Alan will locate the practices discussion in the context of the policy.

Participants are encouraged to attend both sessions. However, the sessions will function as stand alone offerings to allow for people with specific interests to attend one or the other.

Link to presentation slides or Link to presentation recording

26 May - Inside the tutorial - Designing the tutorial experience

Students widely describe tutorial sessions as valuable, and even as the place where they feel most engaged in learning. Yet, despite local research in the practices of tutorial sessions across various universities, the tutorial experience and the tutor receive limited attention in review and evaluation processes. In particular, the selection, training, support and evaluation of tutors remains a poorly attended to area of teaching practice at this and many other South African universities. Tutors, even more so than academic staff, have poor access to professional development opportunities in relation to their teaching practice.  This seminar reviews some of the experiences of tutors, lecturers and students across UCT. Drawing on this understanding and theories of  learning, we seek to identify a series of principles and associated actions which may integrate the tutorial experience more deliberately into the course structure. We identify the consequences of such choices for our tutors experiences of  teaching.

Date: Thursday, 26 May, 1-2PM
Venue: CILT Green Room (7.63), Level 7, PD Hahn Building

19 May - Exploring Altmetrics: What are they and how can we use them?

We live in a world where research outputs are increasingly (and sometimes, exclusively) available online. While citations are still used to assess these outputs, online technologies enable the use of alternative metrics (altmetrics) as a complementary measure. This session will briefly introduce the concept of altmetrics as well as how it is being and can be used in the scholarly communication field. A brief practical guide to using the Altmetric.com bookmarklet will also be covered - please bring a laptop with Chrome, Firefox or Safari browser installed. 

Date: Thursday, 19 May, 1-2PM
Venue: CILT Green Room (7.63), Level 7, PD Hahn Building

05 May - First stir and then blend it! Lessons learnt from a pilot programme in architecture

To enable working individuals and other non-traditional students with limited means and located in outlying areas, to advance their qualifications, traditional offerings should be interrogated. Alternative pathways to qualification must be sought, employing thoughtful learning design process and optimising available technology that is accessible, practical and sustainable.

In response to the need to transform the architectural profession, to promote broader access and address issues of affordability and proximity to the campus, an existing curriculum was redesigned. The new blended BTech programme in Architectural Technology is offered through a University-Industry collaboration by means of on-campus block release, office-based mentoring and online engagement. The studio methodology, which is closely associated with architectural education, remains at the centre of the learning agenda, although through different modalities and implemented across time and space. In this presentation, lessons learnt from a pilot programme that successfully produced its first graduates in April this year, are shared.

Date: Thursday, 05 May, 1-2PM
Venue: CILT Conference Rm (7.63), Level 7, PD Hahn Building

Link to video recording and PowerPoint slides of this presentation

21 Apr - Academic Blogging in a risky world

Once upon a time, people scribbled notes about their teaching on napkins, on little black hard cover books, on the mist on shower walls. And while many people still do all those things, they also blog about their teaching. Unlike napkins, prone to landing up in the bin, a blog stays right where you left it, and while little black books are notoriously hard to find ideas in, blogs are imminently searchable. But blogging is also scary and potentially dangerous. But that’s no reason not to use it strategically to improve learning - both for you and your students!
 
This seminar focuses on blogging for learning. We’ll identify the pitfalls of blogging and balance that with a consideration of the gains. From looking at some of my favourite academic blogs and bloggers (if you have any favourites, bring them along to the session too), we’ll try to determine how to make blogging work for you in your context with your particular goals. After a whizz bang tour through some tools that facilitate the blogging process, the session will wrap up with thinking about how our awareness of learning through blogging might impact on how we structure our students learning.

Date: Thursday, 21 April, 1-2PM
Venue: CILT Conference Rm (7.63), Level 7, PD Hahn Building

Link to video recording and PowerPoint slides of this presentation

10 Mar - Open Education @ UCT: global context, support, grants and adding resources to OpenUCT

This seminar will introduce the various components of Open Education at UCT and will include a brief overview of Open Education internationally. It will focus on what is happening at UCT and where you can find support and advice about Copyright and/or Creative Commons and preparing your teaching materials for contribution to Open UCT.
 
In these times of transformation and calls for free Higher Education, one way where we really can make a difference is to contribute our teaching materials as OER for all students to access. Glenda Cox from CILT, and Jill Claassen from the Library, will show you how we can help to take the first steps towards opening up education for all.

Date: Thu 10 Mar (13:00-14:00)
Venue: Green Meeting Room (Rm 7.69), PD Hahn Building, UCT Upper Campus

19 Nov 2015- Teaching portfolios: the Whys and Hows

Online Teaching Portfolios offer a more public and professional view of teaching as a scholarly activity. They provide an overview of your development as a university teacher, helping you and others to see your teaching as an ongoing process of enquiry, innovation, and reflection. Creating such a portfolio involves thinking about your teaching in context, as well as in selecting and organizing evidence of your teaching. As particular and augmented forms of representation of what an academic CV might look like, teaching portfolios have the following features. They are:

• concise (e.g. 10 pages + appendices),
• highly personalized and critically reflective,
• evidence-based,
• intentionally and thoughtfully integrated, organized, and presented.
• They are focused on teaching practices and student learning.

Some examples of teaching portfolios here.

However, developing a teaching portfolio is sometimes experienced as a daunting task, and a digital portfolio even more so. This seminar offers the chance to explore the genre of teaching portfolios, consider opportunities for use, and describe the value of the teaching portfolio as a process and product.
 
This seminar is presented by Dr Nicola Pallitt, who co-facilitated a workshop on teaching portfolios coordinated by CHEC (details here) earlier this year. As part of the Curriculum and Course Design team Nicola’s work involves assisting lecturers with integrating ePortfolios in curricula. More info here.

Date: Thu 19 Nov (13:00-14:00)
Venue: Green Meeting Room (Rm 7.69), PD Hahn Building, UCT Upper Campus

Link to video recording and PowerPoint slides of this presentation

13 Nov 2015 - Powerful knowledge and knowledge of the powerful: what can social realism offer to support social justice in higher education?

Higher education is now and always has been implicated in reproducing social inequalities in society. But can higher education contribute to social justice, and if so, what does this mean for the way we think about curriculum? Arguing for a theory of access to higher education without an accompanying theory of knowledge can contribute to naturalising new forms of social inequality. Is there value in distinguishing between powerful knowledge and knowledge of the powerful, which is a key distinction made by those in the ‘social realist’ school in the sociology of education?

This session will debate and discuss what is meant by a ‘theory of knowledge’ to underpin curriculum. It will consider whether, and if so how, social realism in the sociology of education can make a contribution to developing a curriculum that supports social justice. This seminar will be presented by Leesa Wheelahan.

Leesa Wheelahan commenced as the William G. Davis Chair of Community College Leadership at OISE at the beginning of 2014. Prior to that she was at the University of Melbourne in Australia where she was an associate professor in adult and vocational education. Her research interests include the role of knowledge in vocational qualifications, the links between tertiary education and the labour market, tertiary education policy, social justice and student equity, professional development of teachers in vocational education and training, the blurring of the divide between the vocational and higher education sectors, and student pathways, qualifications frameworks and credit pathways in tertiary education. She has researched and published widely on these topics, and is currently leading a number of research projects on pathways in education and work in Canada. Her role includes coordinating a PhD program for community college leaders at the University of Toronto.

Date: Fri 13 Nov (11:30-12:30)
Venue: Green Meeting Room (Rm 7.69), 7th Floor, PD Hahn Building, UCT Upper Campus

Link to video recording and PowerPoint slides of this presentation

21 Oct 2015 - LX Design: Mapping the journey

The emerging concept of learner experience design, or LX Design, is all about creating better experiences for learners. By combining traditional learning design methods with new user experience design techniques, learning designers can add powerful tools to their toolkit. In this session we will take a look at learner journey maps. What are they, how do you make them and when can you use them?

Joyce Seitzinger is a learner experience designer, open badges advocate, digital presence coach and founder of Academic Tribe. Working with a distributed network of education specialists, Academic Tribe has worked on projects for education and research organisations, such as RMIT University, the University of Melbourne, the Australian Institute for Training and Development and the Dutch AIDS Foundation. Joyce co-facilitates the Open Badges Australia and New Zealand community group (@ob_anz) and is editor of the LXDesign.co blog. Joyce has worked in corporate and higher education in the Netherlands, New Zealand and now Australia and is a frequent speaker at edtech conferences and events around the globe. You can find Joyce on Twitter as @catspyjamasnz

Date: Wed 21 Oct (13:00-14:00 - with time for questions afterwards)
Venue: Prof Cronje from CPUT has kindly offered his house as a seminar venue

*PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS SEMINAR HAS BEEN CANCELLED*

20 Oct 2015 - Inclusion and exclusion in global contexts: education, democracy and dialogue

In this seminar I want to provide a basis for discussion about inclusion and exclusion in education, including the context of struggle in the UK and internationally in which they are situated. I propose also to reflect on the extent to which democracy and dialogue are supported or suppressed in contemporary developments in open and distance education, especially with regard to change driven by digital technologies.
 
Alan Tait is a values-led educator, committed to the use of distance e- and open learning for social justice and inclusion. He is Professor of Distance Education and Development at the Open University UK, and has a long record of practice and publication. Alan retires from the Open University at the end of 2015 in the position of Director of International Development and Teacher Education. He was Pro-Vice Chancellor (Academic) at the Open University UK 2007-2012, and was formerly Dean of the Faculty of Education and Language Studies. He was Editor of the European Journal of Distance and E Learning (EURODL) 2005-2013, was from 1989-1998 Editor of Open Learning, was President of the European Distance and E-Learning Network (EDEN) from 2007-2010, and Co-Director of the Cambridge International Conference on Open and Distance Learning 1988-2013.

In 2012 Alan was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by Moscow State University for Economics, Statistics and Informatics, and appointed Visiting Online Consultant at the Open University of China in 2013. Alan will continue his professional activity as Emeritus Professor at the Open University; founding Editor of the Journal of Learning for Development, produced from the Commonwealth of Learning; Visiting Professor at Aalborg University, Denmark; Visiting Fellow of the Centre for Distance Education at the University of London; and transformation advisor to Botswana Open University.

Date: 20 October (13:00-14:00)
Venue: Green Meeting Room (Rm 7.69), 7th Floor, PD Hahn Building, UCT Upper Campus

*PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS SEMINAR HAS BEEN CANCELLED*

20 Oct 2015 - An open conversation with Ulf Olsson: Distribution of responsibility in postgraduate supervision

Undergraduate thesis writing is a complex work that needs a compound interaction between the student and the supervisor. The presented study strived to find answers to how the distribution of responsibility between student and supervisor is perceived by each group respectively. Gaps and overlaps relating to the distribution of responsibility were identified and compared at the Department of Computer and Systems Sciences (DSV) and the Department of Child and Youth Studies (BUV), both at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Stockholm University. Altogether, 344 supervisors and students participated in the survey. Undergraduates and supervisors indicate where they believe the responsibility lies between themselves and the other party in the thesis writing process.

The presentation will also give an example of how the Department of Computer and Systems Sciences at Stockholm University makes use of an IT-support system to handle the problems perceived by bachelor and master students about too little instructions as well as infrequent and insufficient supervisor feedback. Supervisors on the other hand face the problem of not having time to provide the feedback needed, especially when students are beginners and there are many students to supervise (Hansson & Hansen 2015).

Ulf Olsson has been teaching and doing research in higher education for 20 years at Karlstad University and since 2008 at Stockholm University, Sweden. Access to education, flexibility and different kinds of online education have been the focus. His PhD dissertation investigated factors that could predict study success before the concept of learning analytics become popular. In recent years, open courses as professional development and higher education institution strategies for open education and the use of technology enhanced learning have come to the fore. Ulf's current work involves professional development for university teachers and research projects.

Date: 20 October (10:00 - 12:00)
Venue: Green Meeting Room (Rm 7.69), PD Hahn Building, UCT Upper Campus

*PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS SEMINAR HAS BEEN CANCELLED*

19 Oct 2015 - Open education

Within higher education and research, collaboration between universities is increasing in order to create platforms for marketing and conducting MOOCs (open, flexible online courses, harboring many participants) (Daniel, 2012). These courses are believed to provide a great opportunity for more people to acquire access to higher education, and to develop new models for education, although no novel forms of the education have as yet been pinpointed. A common preconception among researchers and debaters is that MOOCs are changing the preconditions of the universities’ operations. Other researchers and debaters are more apprehensive (Karsenti, 2013). Publishing in open access journals is a current parallel development (Carroll, 2013). Research results are thus made available outside the journals of commercial publishing houses, increasing the access to research results for people outside academia. Even though many teachers in academia view MOOCs and IT within teaching with scepticism, new commercial stakeholders exist today, who may influence the operating models (Bokor, 2013; Karsenti, 2013).  
 
The rapid development of knowledge requires highly educated employees to develop their expertise continually, not least in high-tech companies. For such companies, this applies in particular to the need of taking advantage of relevant research-based knowledge from academia (Benner & Sörlin, 2015; Perez Vico, Fernqvist, Hellsmark, Molnar, & Hellström, 2014). A new way for businesses to exploit such knowledge is offered by the development of open flexible web-based courses. There are several initiatives where the development of such courses is based on co-creation between universities and companies. In these courses, the business development areas of companies are linked with research areas of HEIs.

The study and presentation raises questions about:

• attitudes among teachers in higher education towards open courses
• attitudes among managers and HR specialists in business towards open courses as professional development
• the ”openness” as a potential problem in professional development
• whether open education and MOOCs might be a way to reinforce research collaborations and research environments.

Ulf Olsson has been teaching and doing research in higher education for 20 years at Karlstad University and since 2008 at Stockholm University, Sweden. Access to education, flexibility and different kinds of online education have been the focus. His PhD dissertation investigated factors that could predict study success before the concept of learning analytics become popular. In recent years, open courses as professional development and higher education institution strategies for open education and the use of technology enhanced learning have come to the fore. Ulf's current work involves professional development for university teachers and research projects.

Date: 19 October (12:30 - 13:30)
Venue: Green Meeting Room (Rm 7.69), PD Hahn Building, UCT Upper Campus

12 Oct 2015 - Harnessing the power of the crowd: Futurelearn’s vision of MOOCs potential in Africa

Mark Lester (FutureLearn’s Global Head of Education Partnerships) will take a look at how FutureLearn, the UK’s pioneer of massive social online learning, and its partners are beginning to use MOOCs to enhance access to education, harness the power of the crowd to improve learning, address major national skills challenges and devise business models that will help make these activities sustainable. It will offer a perspective on what is working and how FutureLearn hopes to work in partnership with African institutions to develop courses and pathways relevant for local populations.

Mark Lester is the Global Head of Education Partnerships at FutureLearn. Futurelearn is a British based MOOC platform created as private company wholly owned by The Open University. It has 72 partners from around the world, including many of the best UK and international universities, as well as institutions with a huge archive of cultural and educational material, such as the British Council, the British Library, the British Museum, and the National Film and Television School. There are 2 million learners taking courses through FutureLearn.

Date: Mon 12 Oct (13:00-14:00)
Venue: Green Meeting Room (Rm 7.69), PD Hahn Building, UCT Upper Campus

Link to video recording and PowerPoint slides of this presentation

1 Oct 2015 - An Afternoon of Exploration: Habitable Worlds - the case for Adaptive eLearning in Education​

Smart Sparrow in collaboration with the Center for Education Through Exploration (ETX) at Arizona State University is developing a suite of next-generation courseware, inspired by Habitable Worlds, as part of the Inspark Science Network project. This courseware has the potential to impact positively on learning and teaching across a broad range of disciplines. For examples of how this courseware has been used in science, engineering and medical science please see https://www.smartsparrow.com/case-studies/.
 
In this particular seminar we will explore how this courseware was used in the online course, Habitable Worlds, a gen-ed astrobiology themed course, which explores the formation of stars, planets, Earth, life, intelligence, technological civilizations and, ultimately, is a quest of exploration as we attempt to answer one of the most profound questions: are we alone in the universe? Produced by Prof. Ariel Anbar and Dr. Lev Horodyskyj from Arizona State University, Habitable Worlds is also available for faculty to teach as a full course or separate learning modules.

Please join Professor Ariel Anbar on October 1 at 4PM (South Africa time) for a demo of the courseware and discussion about the curriculum and technology innovations that make Habitable Worlds unique. Please note that this is a virtual seminar.

Date: Thu 1 October 4-5pm South Africa time, 7-8am Pacific time
Venue: Green Meeting Room (Rm 7.69), PD Hahn Building, UCT Upper Campus

8 Sep 2015 - Emerging scholarly practices in digital spaces

What do networked scholars do online? What are their habits and what activities do they engage with? In this presentation, I will examine the day-today realities of social media and online networks for scholarship and illuminates the opportunities, tensions, conflicts, and inequities that exist in these spaces. This seminar will be presented by George Veletsianos.

George holds a Canada Research Chair in Innovative Learning and Technology and is an Associate Professor at Royal Roads University. His research has been dedicated to understanding the practices and experiences of learners, educators, and scholars in emerging online settings such as online social networks and digital environments. Individually and collaboratively, George has published more than 40 peer-reviewed manuscripts and book chapters and given more than 70 talks at conferences and events worldwide.
- See more about George at: http://www.veletsianos.com/about-2/

Date: Tues 8 Sept 1-2pm
Venue: Leslie Social Science (LS1C), Upper Campus

You can find the link to the presentation on Slideshare here

7 Sep 2015 - Emerging Trends in Online and Hybrid Education

As online and hybrid education enter the third decade, there are significant efforts to move beyond the virtualization of traditional face-to-face classroom and move more towards learner-centric approaches. This shift has the potential to change the discussion of whether online and hybrid approaches “can be as good as” traditional approaches to a discussion of how online and hybrid approaches “can provide better learning opportunities”. During this talk we will explore this long-term trend, several of the drivers enabling the change, and the implications for current and future educators. This seminar will be presented by Phil Hill.

Phil is Co-Publisher of the e-Literate blog, Co-Producer of e-Literate TV, and Partner at MindWires Consulting. As a market analyst, Phil has analyzed the growth of technology-enabled change for educational institutions, uncovering and describing the major trends and implications for the broader market. His unique graphics and visual presentations have been widely used in the industry. As an independent consultant, Phil helps educational institutions, technology and content vendors, and policy makers as they consider and implement new initiatives. Phil’s clients have included Western Governors University, California Community College System, Iowa State University, Bournemouth University, Pearson Education, Coursera, and others.

Date: Mon 7 Sept 1-2pm
Venue: Leslie Social Science (LS1C), Upper Campus

You can find the link to the presentation on Slideshare here

20 Aug 2015 - Visual Literacy in Higher Education? Why and How?

"Literacy” usually means the ability to read and write, but it can also refer to the ability to “read” kinds of signs other than words — for example, images or gestures. The proliferation of images in our culture — in newspapers and magazines, in advertising, on television, and on the Web — makes visual literacy, the ability to “read” images, a vital skill. But what does it mean to read an image, and how can teachers/lecturers help students develop the skills to do so thoughtfully?

Visual literacy is the ability to see, to understand, and ultimately to think, create, and communicate graphically. Generally speaking, the visually literate viewer looks at an image carefully, critically, and with an eye for the intentions of the image’s creator. This seminar will focus on relating visual literacy to Higher Education and why it is so important to understand how visual literacy impacts learning and teaching. We will also focus on the different levels of visual literacy and how it can develop critical thinking skills. This Seminar will be presented by Rondine Carstens from the Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching.

Date: Thu 20 Aug 1-2pm
Venue: CILT Conference Rm (7.63), Level 7, PD Hahn Building

Link to video recording and PowerPoint slides of this presentation

7 May 2015 - The power of story: Digital storytelling in the academy and beyond

Digital stories are short first-person videos that combine images, text, narration and other sounds. The product is simple; but the process of digital storytelling, through which these stories are produced, spans a wide spectrum - from largely technical software training to a deep reflective practice that can help people discover and communicate the meaning of important life experiences. Digital storytelling is used in education to create portfolios and build technical skills; in NGOs as a tool for debriefing, advocacy and training; and by artists and activists as a way to amplify unheard voices, build bridges and spark dialogue. This seminar will examine a variety of different perspectives on digital storytelling, with a particular focus on low-tech production techniques, ethical issues and the different ways it can be incorporated into curricula.
 
This seminar will be presented by Pam Sykes who has two decades of experience in listening to and telling diverse stories. A digital storytelling facilitator since 2010, she has worked with NGOs and companies as well as with students in a variety of settings.

Link to video recording and PowerPoint slides of this presentation

9 Apr 2015 - Networked literacies and agency: an exploration
Link to video recording and PowerPoint slides of this presentation

Amidst the changing higher education landscape, the current discourse in higher education is flooded with notions of different types of literacies, the notion of metaliteracy, fluencies, intelligences and of course, skills and attributes needed by students. In responding to the tensions and anxieties of, but not limited to, the increasing inequalities of the 21st century and the increasing number of claims and counter-claims by a range of stakeholders, we increasingly reflect on and redefine the purpose of higher education and notions of graduateness. Each new day therefore sees yet another set of literacies, skills, or propositions being introduced, replacing the lists received last month and acclaimed yesterday. Possibly underlying our anxious search for definitions  of “literacy” lays an unease that the knowledge maps of the past have, to a large extent, been proven to be fragile and (possibly/mostly?) the illegitimate offspring of unsavory liaisons between ideology, context and humanity’s gullibility in believing in promises of unconstrained scientific progress. Our continuous search for definitions, frameworks, and taxonomies of literacy has become our hope for creating a center that holds…

There are many possible lenses through which we can engage with literacies. In this seminar I would like to reflect on literacy-as-agency as basis for a critical consciousness through which we are empowered to ‘read the world”; a world characterised by the changing nature of knowledge and the production of knowledge, rising inequalities and networks. Using Bourdieu’s concepts of field, habitus, and capital I will propose the notion of performing metaliteracy using the broad tenets of actor-network theory. 

Performing metaliteracy involves an embodied and agentic understanding of the cognitive, technological, social, affective and metacognitive dimensions of metaliteracy. I conclude by proposing metaliteracy as agency in the service of hope, moving from “a rhetoric of conclusions towards a rhetoric of contentions” in a time “when the old is dying and the new cannot be born”.

Paul Prinsloo is a Research Professor in Open Distance Learning (ODL) in the College of Economic and Management Sciences, University of South Africa (Unisa). His academic background includes fields as diverse as theology, art history, business management, law, education, online learning, and religious studies. Paul embraces social media and actively engages in digital scholarship through Twitter (@14prinsp), Facebook, Linkedin and a blog dedicated to open distance teaching and learning (http://www.opendistanceteachingandlearning.wordpress.com).

26 Mar 2015 - Blended Statistics, what next?
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The Statistical Sciences Department put its largest first year course online in 2014. Having emerged from the experience of dragging, pushing, urging and tripping over 1400 first year students all the way to the finish line, we look forward to sharing some thoughts with colleagues in this seminar.

The seminar will be presented by Leanne Scott.

13 Nov 2014 - Integrating digital literacy into the curriculum - Read More
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The world out there needs graduates who are 'producers of information and knowledge' rather than 'consumers of information and knowledge'. This means that graduates must be able to find and evaluate information; understand and use digital tools to collaborate, solve problems, and create and effectively share information. Without these 21st century digital literacy competences, graduates struggle to thrive in the knowledge-based economies and technology-driven world. The vast amount of information, for instance on the Internet, and the rapid development of information and communication technology (ICT) that is used for information and knowledge communication, make it compelling for higher education students to be digital literate.
 
In this session, we will share ideas of how academics could integrate digital literacy into the curriculum in order to produce graduates who have ICT, information and learning/academic capabilities. This seminar will be presented by Tabisa Mayisela from the Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching.

6 Nov 2014 - Why ePortfolios in your course for 2015?​
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Are you teaching a course where students need to compile evidence of their learning? Perhaps to showcase collections of work to stakeholders outside of the University?

ePortfolios allow students to curate different forms of evidence using a variety of media in an online space. What makes ePortfolios unique are their portability and the ability to tell a story about one’s learning journey in a time-stamped way that a paper portfolio is often unable to do. They can also be shared online with an audience beyond the University, such as with potential employers. This seminar will locate ePortfolios within a broader continuum of online evidence of learning, explore these as a tool for a variety of purposes and how these purposes interface with course objectives and assessment.

ePortfolios have been used in Higher Education for more than a decade for course assessments and to support the accreditation of professional degrees. More recently, ePortfolios have been used to prepare students for the workplace and allows them to showcase graduate attributes. Notably, the successful use of ePortfolios are most often derived from careful curriculum design and cannot be seen as a ‘tacked on’ technology.

By the end of the seminar, you will have a better sense of some of the myths, issues, questions and practical realities surrounding the use of ePortfolios in Higher Education. You will have a clearer idea about whether or not ePortfolios could be a relevant component of your course and the teaching and learning challenges they can and cannot address.

9 Oct 2014 - Bridging the gap: The use of video conferencing to support higher education
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The world of video-conferencing is changing rapidly. The move to software endpoints and to virtualised backend infrastructure, as well as the near ubiquity of consumer V-C tools (Skype, FaceTime, etc.) together with development of new more efficient video-conferencing CODECs allows conferencing to move out of the meeting room to everywhere. While there are good examples of the use of conferencing tools in higher education, the fact remains that most conferencing vendors are still focussed on the business user. It is perhaps more difficult to understand the affordances of the various tools available and to make the appropriate choice to support higher education use cases that can include teaching and learning, research collaboration, and more traditional management functions. Some time will be taken to place the various conferencing and collaboration tools in context and to discuss the selection of the appropriate tool for the task in hand.

This seminar will present an overview of some of the recent developments in video-conferencing that may have a relevance to an academic setting, and will showcase some examples of these new approaches in action. In particular, the seminar will highlight the work of networks in physics and mathematics research and teaching which are leveraging the power of these tools to enable programmes and collaborations that would be impossible without them.

Finally the seminar will offer some thoughts for discussion on what it may make sense to offer to the SA HE sector going forward in the way of centrally procured and delivered video-conferencing services.

This seminar will be presented by Robert Bristow who is the Senior Co-Design Manager at Jisc (and currently working with Tenet).

25 Sep 2014 - What is happening with ICTs in a high school in the Western Cape? Teaching with Teachnology at Norman Henshilwood High School
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What digital skills do first year students have when they arrive at university? How do they use technology for learning? How has technology changed their view and expectations of being taught?  What will characterise the digital divide in the near future?  These are some of the questions tertiary institutions are grappling with in an ever changing environment.

To provide input into some of these questions we have Shandre Otto, the deputy principal of Norman Henshilwood  high school, who will talk us through the school’s  ICT  journey over the last three years. She will also discuss where they currently are with their teaching practice relating to ICT’s in the classroom.

All questions relating to the technical aspects of this ICT project will be handled by Mr van Heerden from the school’s IT Department.

11 Sep 2014 - Virtual Clickers for Engaging Students - A quick lunchtime SlamShop

A classroom response system allows a lecturer to rapidly collect and display responses from students in a class session. This session will very briefly outline possibly approaches to using virtual clickers as well a snapshot of current virtual clicker options. Participants will have an opportunity to experience using virtual clickers as well as ask questions and share experiences. If you have a web enabled mobile device please feel free to bring it along. Please ensure that it is set up for web access. This SlamShop will be led by Ian Schroeder from the Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching

28 Aug 2014 - Learning Design - A step-by-step guide to designing an online course
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Most of us have a system for designing an on-campus programme. There are forms to fill out, materials to prepare and schedules to create. Even if you get stuck, there is usually a colleague with sufficient experience of the process who can help and advise. But when you make the decision to offer your course in an online format, where do you start? How do you design an online course that will be pedagogically sound? This presentation will introduce you to the field of learning design, and provide you with an overview of designing an online course for the first time.

This seminar will be presented by Robbert Paddock, the co-CEO of GetSmarter, a specialist online education company.

21 Aug 2014 - Stop MOOCing about! Time to get serious about online learning!
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iTunes U offers the world's largest catalog of educational content from top education institutions worldwide (32 countries), with over 7,500 public courses across all disciplines. From the likes of Harvard, Cambridge, Oxford, the Museum of Modern Art, London School of Economics, Kyoto University and more; to hundreds of K-12 schools, museums and art galleries, including the Smithsonian Institution to the British Film Institute via the Aquarium of the Pacific.

But there is another side to iTunes U. The ability for any educator to create courseware for their students which, unlike a MOOC which requires the learner visit the relevant website on a regular basis, actually pushes content to a learners iPad. And with the ability to link to existing content in the form of MS Office docs, iWork docs, PDF’s, movies, audio, web links, links to existing courses in iTunes U, Apps from the App Store, ePubs and more, anyone who can create a Facebook post is capable of creating an iTunes U course. No programming required.

This seminar explored the capabilities and potentials of iTunes U for higher education and was presented by Alan Goldberg, the director for educational implementation of Apple technology at Digicape.

14 Aug 2014 - Assessment of Online Conversations
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The use of online spaces (forums, conversation spaces, and the like) as a platform for students to engage in the content and process of learning is growing. Whilst these spaces are often used relatively informally – as opportunities to allow students to share insights about concepts; discuss ideas about course content; respond to particular challenges presented to them by lecturers – it might also be possible to use them more formally. Questions then arise about whether it is desirable and possible to develop ways of assessing the contents of these conversations. This seminar introduced and grappled with the possibilities and challenges presented by the process of assessing online conversations. Sub-topics that were explored were: (1) formal and informal approaches to this kind of assessment; (2) the impacts of assessment on this kind of learning; (3) the possible focuses of the assessment; and (4) the design, development and mediation of assessment feedback.

This seminar was presented by Alan Cliff from the Centre for Innovation in Teaching and Learning

7 Aug 2014 - Understanding the Language of Video
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Video has fast gained popularity as an education tool but are we using it effectively? How much thought and process is going into our preparation for video-recorded lessons? Can we emulate the classroom setup on video? This presentation looked at the visual styles and framing that video often takes, specifically looking at the composition of the frame and the content that the educator chooses to show his/her audience at any given point during the runtime and its suitability to a fast-paced and easily irritable audience. What does the ‘You’ on ‘Tube’ really look like? 

This seminar was presented by TinaShe Makwande (Digital Learning Materials Designer) from the Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching (CILT) at UCT.

6 Jun 2014 - Online Presence & Learning Networks in a Connected World - Read more
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What is your digital footprint? Are you aware of your digital shadow? Trying to stay current in your areas of research? Busy finding and collecting the needle in the connected haystack?

These questions are very much a product of the connected world that we live in. This seminar explored ideas and tools relating to developing and maintaining your online presence. Also explored were the Professional Learning Networks (PLNs) that have become crucial tools for identifying information and building knowledge in a world awash with a multitude of information technology options. This seminar was led by Sarah Goodier (OpenUCT) and Ian Schroeder (CILT).

29 May 2014 - Pinterest: Exploring the Options for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education - Read more
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Pinterest is an online platform that is making a huge buzz in the world of social media. Focusing on the visual component, Pinterest attracted a huge number of internet surfers and within a few months after its launch, its user data base counted millions. People tend to favour visual attractiveness over the textual one. This is probably understood given how the mind easily and quickly processes and stores visually encoded data compared to the written code.

Pinterest has some educational potential that we need to capitalise on in our teaching. There are several ways to use Pinterest for educational purposes. The seminar explored the different ways in using Pinterest for collaboration, resources, conversation and following the latest trends e.g. learning and teaching.

The seminar was presented by Rondine Carstens from the Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching at UCT.

21 May 2014 - Digital Storytelling in Higher Education - Read more
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Digital storytelling has entered Teaching and Learning in Higher Education as a way of engaging the 21st century learner, to deepen reflection, promote digital literacies and to provide an authentic way to knowledge acquisition. Digital stories are short digital movies, combining narration, text and images. From a small pilot in the School of Education and Social Sciences in 2010, digital storytelling has now been integrated in more than 15 courses across all Faculties at CPUT. In this seminar Daniela Gachago introduced some of the models of digital storytelling developed at her institution, including content-based and personal narratives, differing widely in terms of topic, support, time spent, and technologies used. She shared research findings emerging from this project and discussed some of the lessons learnt.

This seminar was presented by Ms Daniela Gachago, Senior lecturer Educational Technology Unit, Fundani CHED, Cape Peninsula University of Technology.