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Tony Mays reports on the recent Nadeosa conference held at the Hospitality School of the Durban University of Technology (DUT). The overall theme of the conference was Innovative open learning practices to build a quality integrated post schooling system. An explicit attempt was made in the months leading up to the conference to encourage greater participation by the college sector in the discussions related to this theme and three pre-conference workshops were offered that were designed to speak to this engagement.
- Workshop 1 facilitated by Olwam Mnqwazi and Tolika Sibiya from the Centre for Integrated Post-School Education and Training at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University focused on the sub-theme “Engaging TVET Colleges” and explored student support needs in the TVET sector and posed critical questions about the relationship between curriculum innovation and work.
- Workshop 2 facilitated by Thalia Eccles, Anele Dloto and Britt Baatjies from the Centre for Education Rights and Transformation (previously located at the Nelson Mandela Institute) explored the sub-theme of “Community Education” which explored the establishment of programmes related to everyday life experiences and contexts and the notion of “socially useful forms of work”.
- Workshop 3 facilitated by Tony Mays and Ephraim Mhlanga from Saide provided a half-day orientation to the nature and potential use of Open Educational Resources (OER) in helping to open access and improve quality in the post school system.
Following on from the design of the 2014 conference, the 2015 Nadeosa conference again started with a colloquium comprising two panel discussions exploring respectively the need for collaboration in realising the vision of the 2013 White Paper as well as innovations in educational practice.
The two panel discussions were complemented by a keynote address by Dr Dianne Parker, Deputy Director General for University Education within the Department of Higher Education and Training. Among a wide variety of issues, Dr Parker acknowledged the contribution that open and distance learning (ODL) has made to expanding access, but noted that there was need to focus on improved quality and throughput before we could expand ODL significantly and also that we needed a better understanding of the areas in which ODL approaches might support the intended four-fold expansion of the TVET sector.
During the course of the rest of the day a variety of interesting presentations were made on both practice and research in ODL under the sub-themes of uses of technology in ODL, professional development and policy and/or theory. The day ended with a networking cocktail function.
The second day of the conference began with the Annual General Meeting comprising the President’s report, the Nadeosa financials, an update on membership and the election of a new executive.
Following this, Jenny Glennie provided some feedback from the Unesco and ICDE Global High Level Policy Forum focussing on Online, Open and Flexible Higher education for the future we want. She identified actions prposed by ICDE and challenged Nadeosa to dermine how it should contribute. It was noted by the forum that while online, open and flexible systems can deliver quality education, student success, improved capacity and cost-effective pathways to learning,there needs to be appropriate upfront investment in coherent programme design with integrated assessment and support.
Prof Volker Wedekind from the University of the Witwatersrand, provided the second keynote address of the conference which focussed on research and the way forward for the TVET sector. He noted the skewed enrolment patterns in South Africa with a higher enrolment in higher education than TVET and explored the different ways that TVET had been understood over the years. He noted the diverse range of education and training opportunities now encompassed by the sector and the need for ongoing professional development and infrastructural support for the sector as well as the continued challenges regarding the management of meaningful practical and workplace experience.
The keynote was followed by another set of parallel paper presentations which again raised some interesting perspectives on policy and practice. The day ended with a panel discussion on Approaches and strategies for capacity-building and supporting capacity-building followed by a short closing ceremony.
All delegates to the conference were supplied with a flashdrive containing recent useful policy documents and ODL guidelines. The flashdrives were sponsored by BlueTek.
In closing, the re-elected Nadeosa President, Prof Mpine Makoe, thanked DUT for hosting the conference, the sponsors and exhibitors for their support, the keynote and panel presenters for sharing their ideas and all the delegates for their active participation in another successful Nadeosa conference.
Further details about the conference including links to presentations can be found by visiting the Nadeosa website at www.nadeosa.org.za. |
