Saide Current Awareness
26 September 2023

 

Distance education 

  • Unraveling the controversial effect of Covid-19 on college students’ performance Source: Nature We disentangle the channels through which Covid-19 has affected the performance of university students by setting up an econometric strategy to identify separately changes in both teaching and evaluation modes, and the short and long term effects of mobility restrictions. We exploit full and detailed information from the administrative archives of one among the first universities to be shut down since the virus spread from Wuhan. The results help solving the inconsistencies in the literature by providing evidence of a composite picture where negative effects such as those caused by the sudden shift to remote learning and by the exposure to mobility restrictions, overlap to opposite effects due to a change in evaluation methods and home confinement during the exam’s preparation. Such overlap of conflicting effects, weakening the signaling role of tertiary education, would add to the learning loss by further exacerbating future consequences on the “Covid” generation.
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  • Enticing students back to campus is not a simple endeavour Source: Times Higher Education Focusing on the quality of in-person teaching is only one way to make returning to physical campuses more appealing, says Carolyn Evans
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  • The Latest In Remote Learning Strategies Source: LinkedIn Remote learning has become the new style of education for students and teachers in today's society. Eliminating the need for physical space and encouraging the flexibility of studying from anywhere has made it the prevalent choice for many. While this study mode can help students learn to be adaptable and flexible, it can hinder their capacity to study effectively. To avoid this from happening, here are some of the strategies you can follow which will improve your e learning experience.
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  • How Video Making Became An Essential Part Of Distance Learning In 2023 Source: GadgetLite In this blog post, we’ll delve into why video making has gained such prominence in the realm of distance learning.

 

 Education: South Africa 

 

Language, Literacies and Research Writing

  • Digital Writing Technologies in Higher Education Source: SpringerLink An open access publication which covers the advancements of 40 years of digital writing with precise descriptions of more than 20 key technologies. Makes the state of the art in writing technology and its development accessible for both researchers and practitioners and  discusses the implications of technological advancements for writing theory and practice.

 

Open Education and Open Educational Resources

  • The Emergence of the Open Research University Through International Research Collaboration Source: International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning  To investigate  the  impact  of  international  research  collaboration  by  active  researchers  affiliated  with  open  institutions,  a  bibliometrics  analysis  was  conducted  of  three  open  universities  and  nine traditional, comparative universities between 2000 and 2022. The results indicate that research outputs that are open access, sponsored and funded, and developed with international co-authors have positive and statistically significant effects on citation counts.


Post Schooling

  • University Of South Africa Partners With THE To Advance Quality Education In Africa Source: India Education Diary Times Higher Education (THE) has partnered with Unisa to put on THE University Impact Forum: Quality Education, which is taking place at the university’s main campus in Pretoria, South Africa, this Thursday 21 September 2023. The forum’s theme will look at Developing and enhancing quality education in Africa, which is based on the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4 – quality education.
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  • Some strides to include climate change in curricula Source: University World News “We call for a comprehensive and systemic response to the incipient debt crisis outside default frameworks to create the fiscal space that all developing countries need to finance development and climate action,” African leaders said in the Nairobi Declaration on Climate Change and Call to Action adopted at the conclusion of the Africa Climate Summit that took place early in September 2023 in Nairobi, Kenya.The summit focused on driving green growth in Africa and climate finance solutions and, in these efforts, to champion SDGs, academia is crucial.
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  • Book interrogates pathways to address challenges in HE Source: University World News A new thrust towards the search for the identity of African universities has been undertaken by 16 scholars, who have been probing how African academia could construct a progressive future that would address rampant challenges within the sector. In their new book, Creating the New African University, the scholars, many of them based at the Ali Mazrui Centre for Higher Education Studies, or AMCHES, at the University of Johannesburg (UJ) in South Africa, say there is an urgency for African universities to decolonise themselves and cast away roots of academic dependency.
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  • How to create a ‘new’ type of university for Africa Source: University World News "...The discussions in this article are subsequently framed within the following questions: How do HEIs in Africa keep their relevance in the ever-changing context of the labour market? How do they transform their philosophy of engagement, ensuring social justice, greater access and accommodation of African epistemologies? This article, therefore, seeks to uncover the essence and role of HEIs in Africa in a constantly evolving global socio-economic and political landscape. Central to this discourse are questions concerning the societal responsibilities of HEIs, their responsiveness to the dynamics of the labour market, their philosophy of community engagement, and their resonance with African contexts and values."
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  • Research has to change the lives of end users, experts say Source: University World News As calls grow louder for Africa to produce a critical mass of PhDs to help find local solutions to the challenges affecting the continent, there should also be a sharper focus on how the research and innovations produced by scientists get to the end users and improve their lives. This is according to experts drawn from academia, governments and the private sector, who, at a conference on 14-15 September in Johannesburg, South Africa, said the call on Africa to produce more PhDs – the World Bank suggested 10,000 PhDs annually – will not help to address the challenges affecting the continent, especially in the health, access to water and climate change sectors, if policy-makers are not using research evidence to make decisions and the research produced remains inaccessible to the public.

 

Skills and Employment 

  • Jobs of Tomorrow: Large Language Models and Jobs Source: World Economic Forum In the latest white paper of the Jobs of Tomorrow series, the World Economic Forum, in collaboration with Accenture, presents an examination of the potential impact of large language models (LLMs) on jobs. The integration of LLMs in various industries presents a paradigm shift in how we interact with information and, by extension, how we work.

 

Teaching and Learning- Local and Global

  • How well you do at school depends on how much your teachers know: insights from 14 French-speaking countries in Africa Source: The Conversation Countries in sub-Saharan Africa have made remarkable progress towards reaching universal school enrolment in the past 25 years. Across the region, 8 in 10 children of primary school age are now enrolled in school, and in countries such as Benin and Madagascar this figure stands at almost 10 in 10 children. However, it is becoming increasingly clear that many children in the region are learning very little in school. This “learning crisis” means that it will be difficult to reach the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal of quality education for all by 2030. 
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  • Applied Ethics for Instructional Design and Technology Source:EdTech Books An open Access book which looks at ethic as design, its use in decision making, and other contemporary Issues which impact ID.
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  • Implementing project-based learning: a practical guide Source: Times Higher Education Ibham Veza and Mohd Syaifuddin Mohd provide practical guidance and methodologies for introducing project-based learning and outline its potential impact on students
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  • Changing from Within: Narratives of Resistance from Equity-Oriented Learning Designers Source: The Journal of Applied Instructional Design This paper draws on a larger study where 34 women practising and supporting equity-oriented learning design across the world were interviewed in early 2021. The paper highlights the strategies learning designers use to navigate clashes between their own values and those held by their institutions. The authors argue that positionality, institutional culture, and personal history impact how learning designers navigate these spaces and that understanding context is essential when using an ecosystems theory view. Finally, the paper explores four shared building blocks framed by brown’s (2017) elements of an emerging strategy, which promotes a way of seeing change as small actions and connections. These in turn create complex systems and patterns which eventually become ecosystems and societies.


Technology Enhanced Learning

  • Generativism: the new hybrid Source: Arvix Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) in Education has in a few short months moved from being the topic of discussion around speculative education futures to a very concrete reality. It is clear that the future of education, as all industries, is collaboration with GenAI. GenAI attributes make it well suited for social and constructivist approaches to learning that value collaboration, community and the construction of knowledge and skills through active learning. This article presents an approach to designing education in collaboration with GenAI, based on digital education frameworks adapted for this new hybrid of the AI age.
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  • Back to college with generative AI Source: Substack.com Helen Beetham latest blog on her recent 10 min podcast where she "discusses the challenges of developing AI literacy in an unclear and rapidly-evolving context, the coordination of knowledge through AI, problematic labour structures that underpin AI technologies, and possibilities for universities to develop alternative ways forward." and her round up on on AI aptly sub titled "Season of mists and microsoft integrations" as she navigates the swirling, foggy curent context. 
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  • Navigating the AI challenge in education — banishing ChatGPT is not the answer Source: Daily MAverick Deep suspicion of AI as a vehicle that can facilitate cheating in an educational setting has seen calls to banish the use of technology like ChatGPT in educational assessments. This approach will result in a disconnect between education and the real world it prepares students for. Instead, an integrative approach to teaching and assessment is possible.
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  • SPECIAL SECTION: ADVANCING THEORY IN THE AGE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE Source: British Educational Research Association The British Journal of Educational Technology (BEJET) has published a special section around Ai in education entitled ‘Advancing theory in the age of artificial intelligence’. In the introduction of the same name (and which is free to access) the authors, Shane Dawson, Srecko Joksimovic, Caitlin Mills, Dragan Gašević, and George Siemens. “To address the need of effective deployment of AI systems in education”, they say, “a theoretical lens is required to guide and direct both research and practice. Theory provides the guard rails to ensure that principles, values and trusted constructs shape the use of AI in educational settings, ensuring that values, existing research, concerns of multiple stakeholders and on-going contributions to science remain centre stage.”
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  • UNESCO issues urgent call for appropriate use of technology in education Source: UNESCO Released in July but included here given its constant reference in current posts. A new global UNESCO report on technology in education highlights the lack of appropriate governance and regulation. Countries are urged to set their own terms for the way technology is designed and used in education so that it never replaces in-person, teacher-led instruction, and supports the shared objective of quality education for all. 
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  • I’ve always loved tech. Now, I’m a Luddite. You should be one, too. Source: Washington Post An opinion piece by Brian Merchant, technology columnist at the Los Angeles Times, is the author of “Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion against Big Tech.”
     

 

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