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SAIDE Welcomes Brenda Mallinson Our New ICTs
in Education Programme Specialist
Brenda Mallinson comes to SAIDE from Rhodes
University in Grahamstown where she was a lecturer in
the Department of Information Systems from 1999 to 2007.
Prior to that she ran the Computer Based Education Unit
at Rhodes from 1994 to 1998. While at the University,
Brenda established and led a research group in advanced
learning technologies, as well as running a post-graduate
module in this area.
Brenda has recently been employed as Programme Specialist
ICTs in Education at SAIDE and will be working on a
number of Educational Technology projects including
the ongoing Partnership in Higher Education in Africa
(PHEA) Educational Technology Initiative (ETI) project.
SAIDE Extends Congratulations to Our Most Recent
PhD – Dr Ephraim Mhlanga
SAIDE is very proud to announce that our friend
and colleague Ephraim Mhlanga recently received his
PhD from the University of the Witwatersrand. Below
is the citation read out at the recent graduation ceremony.
Mr. Chancellor, Ephraim Mhlanga presented for the degree
of Doctor of Philosophy a thesis entitled:
“Quality Assurance in Higher Education
in Southern Africa: The Case of the Universities of
Witwatersrand, Zimbabwe and Botswana.”
Ephraim examines the complexities involved in implementing
robust quality assurance systems in universities. He
holds that in conflict-ridden environments, the technicalities
of developing and implementing a quality assurance model
cannot be separated from the value framework that underpins
this process. Where top-bottom approaches prevailed
over ownership and legitimacy efforts, where academic
staff were not part of the policy process, where policies
were not supported by sufficient resources, and where
the reporting lines remained predominantly external
to academic practitioners, the implementation of quality
assurance appeared ineffective. This explains to a large
extent why sophisticated and technically impressive
models of quality assurance in the region have not yielded
significant improvements in institutional performance.
According to one of the examiners, “…the
thesis is amongst the best written on the subject of
quality assurance. It is not only topical given the
current environment, but also theoretically sound, analytically
sophisticated, intellectually meaningful, and most importantly
sensible in terms of policy relevance.”
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