Saide Current Awareness
11 April 2023

 

Distance Education

• The History and Future of Teaching Online with the Father of Distance Education Theorist Dr. Michael Grahame Moore Source: The Brighter Side of Education Podcast. Discussing theory in education, the podcast features Dr. Michael Grahame Moore who first defined distance education in his Theory of Transactional Distance in 1972 and then expanded on that in 1997. He was named as “one of the 128 most important, influential, innovative and interesting thinkers on education of all time,” by The Routledge Encyclopedia of Educational Thinkers in 2016. Dr. Moore is internationally recognized for establishing the scholarly study of distance education and for pioneering the practice of teaching online. 

 

Education: South Africa 

• It’s time for outrage about the quality of learning in SA’s schools Source: Daily Maverick 'The system is failing our poorest learners. Nearly 30 years since we became a democracy and the majority of SA’s learners are not learning to read, write or add. Instead of a ‘silent revolution’, our schools are in a silent crisis.' writes Ann Bernstein, head of the Centre for Development and Enterprise. This article is based on ‘The Silent Crisis,’ a series of five CDE research reports on South Africa’s failing education system.

 

• Universities and SRCs still working to find solutions to NSFAS-funded students’ housing crisis Source: Daily Maverick Once again, the start of this academic year was marked by protests at universities across South Africa — mainly over the R45,000 accommodation cap set by the National Student Financial Aid Scheme. Are there any long-term solutions to ensure the cycle of protest does not keep repeating?

 

• Photographic memories of Covid-19 through the eyes of young people Source : Daily Maverick "These 10 young souls have created a document of our country that will forever remain in the consciousness of those who see their images."

 

• Promise Not Kept: Universal Primary Education for All Children in Sub-Saharan Africa Source: NORRAG In this blogpost, Birger Fredriksen discusses a number of challenges that have constrained the implementation of universal primary education (UPE) in sub-Saharan Africa and proposes some priorities for a “policy reset”.

 

Language and Literacies

• In Bilingual Readers, the Visual Cortex Processes Latin and Chinese Characters Differently Source: NeuroScience In people who are bilingual in English and Chinese, certain cortical areas react specifically to Chinese ideograms and appear to be involved in facial recognition processing.

 

• It takes a body to understand the world – why ChatGPT and other language AIs don’t know what they’re saying Source The Conversation Words have meaning for people because we use them to make sense of the world.read further Arthur Glenberg
  Emeritus Professor of Psychology, Arizona State University and Cameron Robert Jones Doctoral Student in Cognitive Science, University of California, San Diego opine further.

 

Open Education and Open Educational Resources

• OER23 Guest Blog Post: ‘OER as a tool to educate against discrimination’ - Fiona Jones, ALTC Blog Open educational resources (OER) are to a large extent and relatively less discriminatory compared to books and journals which are not freely available, non-public libraries, and paid subscription resources such as newsletters, members-only resources, and so on. Although one can still argue that access to a digital device is still required. Nonetheless, when digital access is not an issue, anything that must be paid for is discriminatory to a certain extent, especially in this day and age.

 

• Early Childhood Literacy: Engaging and Empowering Emergent Readers and Writers, Birth – Age 5 Source: The Open Textbook Library 

 

Post Schooling

• ‘Appallingly unethical’: why Australian universities are at breaking point Source: The Guardian Cost-cutting, casualisation and ‘ridiculous’ teaching loads are taking a toll on tertiary institutions – and some academics are fighting back

 

• ‘Window of opportunity’ is beckoning for HE in Africa Source: University World News African universities should make the most of their current ‘window of opportunity’ to access part of the €150 billion (US$163 billion) that the European Union (EU) agreed to invest in the continent last year, says Peter Maassen, a professor in higher education studies at the University of Oslo in Norway and an extraordinary professor at Stellenbosch University in South Africa.

 

• Universities in six countries feature in subject rankings Source: University World News Seventeen departments in African universities are among the world’s top-100 places to study the subjects that they offer, according to the 13th edition of the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2023 that were released in March. Datasets showed that 22 African universities in six countries, Egypt (10) South Africa (8), Ghana (1), Kenya (1), Nigeria (1) and Uganda (1) were included in the roughly 1,500 universities that were assessed.

 

• COVID: Why some students’ mental health did not deteriorate Source: University World News A study has revealed that COVID-19 did not bring about a serious increase in mental health issues at two South African universities. Where increases were observed, they were before the pandemic. The study’s findings suggest that, in the face of ongoing adversity and disruptions on South African university campuses in recent years, COVID-19 may be just one more stressor local students face, and that its impact on student mental health may not have been as marked in South Africa compared with other regions.

 

• Lessons from differences in university pandemic resilience Source: University World News From finances to teaching and learning, the COVID-19 pandemic affected different universities in different ways. The NTU Report on Resilient Universities During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Differences between East and West sought to understand the ways universities demonstrated and enhanced their resilience in the face of the pandemic so that we can learn what might help in future disruptions.

 

• Becoming a professor at a time of decolonisation, marketism Source: University World News This is an edited version of Professor Emmanuel Mfanafuthi Mgqwashu professorial inaugural lecture. He  is the director of the Centre for Higher Education Professional Development, which is part of the faculty of education, North-West University, South Africa. 

 

• Indigenous Knowledge Systems in South Africa and Australia: transforming doctoral education Source: Curriculum Perspectives Springer In this paper, this international team of South African and Australian scholars engage in a transcultural and transdisciplinary dialogue in order to chart how discourses and debates about IKS are understood in the different historical and cultural contexts of South Africa and Australia. They combine the theoretical approaches of de Sousa Santos (2014; 2018a and b) about epistemic justice with the theories of Odora Hoppers (2021), Visvanathan (2009), and First Nations Australian scholars Williams, Bunda, Claxton, and McKinnon (2018) about an Indigenous knowledges global decolonisation praxis framework. 

 

Skills and Employment 

• What It Takes to Roll Out Digital Microcredentials Source: The Evolllution Microcredentials aren’t going away, so it’s critical for higher education to create and implement them in efficiently—and it will take more strategy than some may think. In this interview, Bryan Blakeley discusses the importance of digital microcredentials, what it takes to roll them out effectively and how to illustrate their value to faculty and learners.

 

• South Africa under pressure to fill cyber security skills gap Source: ITWeb Forty percent of South African companies struggle to hire and retain cyber security talent, and 64% agree that the shortage of cyber security skills creates additional cyber risks for organisations.

 

• Survey: Cyber security skills gap poses serious risk Source: ITWeb Late last year, ITWeb conducted a survey to find out if SA businesses are experiencing a cyber security skills shortage, and if so, what they’re doing about it.

 

Teaching and Learning- Local and Global

• In Their Own Words- what Scholars and Teachers want You to Know About  Why and How to Apply the Science of Learning in your Academic Setting. Source: Society for the Teaching of Psychology A collection of articles from some of the world's leading experts on the science of learning, organized into five sections containing chapters focused on the history, principles, applications, and practice of the 'science of learning.

 

• Are we on the verge of having a ‘Universal Teacher’? Source: DonaldClarkPlanB Read Donald Clarks latest blog post

 

• How College Students Say They Learn Best Source: Inside Higher Education

 

Technology Enhanced Learning

• How to Create Compelling Writing Assignments in a ChatGPT Age Source: The Chronicle of Higher Education A recent book offers a road map to new kinds of assignments to inspire your students to write.

 

• Guide for ChatGPT usage in teaching and learning Source: University of the Pretoria This guide which was developed with the help of ChatGPT aims to offer practical tips for lecturers and students to maximise the benefits and the ethical use of ChatGPT.

 

• AI text detectors: a stairway to heaven or hell? Source: TimesHigherEducation The emergence of GPTZero, OpenAI’s text classifier and Turnitin’s AI detector bring a risk of over-reliance on AI classifiers. Are they a solution or a further problem to be solved?