Saide Current Awareness
08 July 2024

 

Distance Education

  • Partnering with Online Program Managers for Distance Education  - Approaches to Policy, Quality, and Leadership Source: Taylor & Franscis This recent publication ofers fresh insights into the practice, implications, and outcomes of partnerships between higher education institutions and for-profit online program managers (OPMs). As colleges and universities race to build effective, sustainable distance education programs, higher education administrators often rely on third-party OPMs for marketing and student recruitment, student support from orientation to graduation, course design and delivery, and other fee-based services. This edited collection provides a global knowledge base for understanding academic quality, policy, and management in university-OPM partnerships along with actionable strategies and frameworks for selection, evaluation, and improvement. Leaders, administrators, developers, and accreditors of digital distance learning programs in higher education will come away with evidence-based guidance and realistic perspectives into the opportunities and challenges of this fast-emerging resource.
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  • Remote Education Benchmarking Toolkit: Higher Education Source: ReliefWeb 
    The COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked a historically unprecedented shock on education systems in Africa. Many higher education institutions were closed by governments in response to the pandemic. The lost learning time not only harms the current generation but could undo decades of progress. At the same time, the crisis has stimulated innovation in the higher education sub-sector. Nontraditional and distance education options have been developed thanks to the rapid intervention of States and partners around the world committed to ensuring educational continuity. However, not all African countries are at the same level of distance education development. In many countries, the development of effective distance education is still in its infancy. Based on the above, The Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA) proposes this toolkit to Ministries of Higher Education in African countries to help them to think, plan and ensure improved implementation and effective distance education.

 

Education: South Africa

  • Lack of resources, not migration control, contributes to SA education problems, says law centre Source: Daily Maverick Neglect of the needs of undocumented children in South Africa’s education system stems not only from migration problems, but also from rural-urban disparities in birth registrations, according to experts.  In October 2023, the then home affairs minister, Aaron Motsoaledi, responding to questions in parliament, said that 258 000 children under the age of 15 were caught up in registration of births backlog.  This backlog, the Centre for Child Law (CCL) said, is the result of services not being centralised in rural areas and is not entirely caused by an influx of migrants. 
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  • 3 ‘special holidays’ planned for schools in South Africa next year Source: BusinessTech The current calendar for South African public schools shows that there will be an extra three holidays in 2025 thanks to ‘special school holidays’.
    The Department of Basic Education has released the proposed school calendar for 2025. According to the calendar, the 2025 school year will commence on 15 January and conclude on 12 December.
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  • South Africa: From Pit Toilets to NSFAS - New Education Ministers Nobuhle Nkabane and Siviwe Gwarube Vow to Turn the Tide Source: Daily Maverick Can South Africa's two brand-new education ministers be more effective than their predecessors in tackling the myriad challenges in schools and higher educational institutions? They shared a few starter points on the sidelines of the Cabinet swearing-in ceremony on Wednesday.
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  • Dynamic young entrepreneurs making strides in education Source: IOL A group of young entrepreneurs are making significant strides in the field of education.
    They have developed an innovative online streaming platform and app called SpongeIn, designed to provide learners with access to the entire CAPS curriculum through video lessons.
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  • South Africa’s youngest Cabinet minister, Siviwe Gwarube, to tackle a myriad challenges  Source: Daily Maverick Eastern Cape-born Siviwe Gwarube is the country’s youngest Cabinet minister. ‘It’s high time young South Africans start to see themselves represented in the people that lead them,’ she says.
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  • Basic Education Minister Siviwe Gwarube has a treacherous mountain to climb Source: Daily Maverick Any efforts to sustainably improve the education system without first addressing corruption will be like pouring water on sand. Gwarube therefore has to begin by tackling Sadtu and improving accountability, says Jonathan Molver, founding Director of Proteus, which works with government, the private sector and civil society to build stronger, equitable education systems. 
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  • How much teachers in South Africa earn Source: Jacaranda The Department of Basic Education published an annual salary adjustment report for teachers in South Africa, which showed that teachers' salaries range significantly based on qualification, experience, and seniority. Based on this report, the lowest salary scale for educators is R154,671 per year, while the highest salary is R1.209-million.

 

Language, Literacies and Research Writing

  • Writing as 'passing' Source: SubStack  Helen Beetham's  latest post on Turing tests, language games, and the instrumentalising of student writing
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  • Conceptualizing multimodal feedback literacy for L2 writing teachers in the digital age Source: International Journal of Applied Linguistics Given that feedback is increasingly digital and multimodal, there is a pressing need to prepare L2 writing teachers to give multimodal feedback. Yet the notion of multimodal feedback appears underrepresented in extant research on teacher feedback literacy and it is often equated as multimedia feedback. To make feedback relevant to multiplicity in feedback-giving modes and technologies, as well as diversity in student backgrounds and composing practices, this paper proposes the construct of multimodal feedback literacy as an important part of teacher feedback literacy. Grounded in social semiotic of multimodality, this paper elucidates the notions of feedback design, feedback affordance, feedback orchestration, and feedback ensemble as essential dimensions of multimodal feedback literacy. This article argues that teachers should develop multimodal feedback literacy at a time when students often turn to ChatGPT for feedback on their writing.
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  • Creating a Literacy-Rich Environment: Tips for Encouraging a Love of Reading and Writing in the Classroom Source: ABCGoLearn Fostering a love for reading and writing among students is crucial, and creating a literacy-rich environment in the classroom is essential to achieve this. By surrounding children with books, print materials, and opportunities to engage with texts, teachers can inspire a lifelong passion for literacy. Here are some effective strategies to cultivate a literacy-rich atmosphere in your classroom.

 

Open Access, Open Education and Open Educational Resources

  • Artificial Intelligence Use to Empower the Implementation of OER and the UNESCO OER Recommendation Source: Open Praxis The International Council for Open and Distance Education OER Advocacy Committee (OERAC) developed two workshops to present the role of AI in OER at two international conferences in the fall of 2023. The workshops presented the features, benefits, key challenges, and practical issues related to using AI technologies from professional, ethical, sustainable, and equitable perspectives, while also focusing on the five areas of the UNESCO OER Recommendation. Participants were dynamically engaged in discussions, and documented their ideas in formats that could be used as OER in themselves. The OERAC noted and categorized the results, and developed short summaries and drafts for further work. Finally, drawing on the findings from the workshops, we asked ChatPDF for a second opinion on further suggestions for AI in connection with OER, which in turn related to the five areas of the recommendation. We conclude that, while there is great potential for the use of AI in the context of the Open Movement, there is also a need for professional ethics, equity, and sustainable capacity building, access, inclusion, policy, models, and international collaboration.
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  • Impact, Difficulties and Achievements of the Production of Open Educational Resources in a Binational Course Source: RIED-Ibero-American Journal of Distance Education An investigation is presented that aimed to analyze the results of a binational course for the production of Open Educational Resources (OER) in response to the development of capacities of the UNESCO Recommendation on OER. The course was generated from the UNESCO/ICDE international stay Open Educational Movement for Latin America 2019. It was implemented in Moodle from January to July 2021. The course was taught in three Mexican institutions and one in Chile. The results show a significant predominance in presentations made in Genially and PowerPoint with a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works license, created by Mexican institutions, as well as the development of some digital skills related to education 4.0. It is concluded that there is still a need to raise awareness on how to share OER to increase the dissemination of knowledge and contribute to open education. As future work, it is considered that the course can be implemented as a MOOC to more broadly address the capacity development of the UNESCO Recommendation on OER.

 

Post Schooling

  • Corruption and nepotism rife at TVET colleges, study finds Source: University World News South African public colleges are plagued by political interference, corruption and nepotism, a study has revealed, writes Msindisi Fengu for Daily Maverick. The ground-breaking research on the evaluation of technical and vocational education and training (TVET) colleges was conducted by Mzabalazo Advisory Services in February. It was one of 30 research projects commissioned by the Department of Higher Education, Science and Innovation in 2019 and funded by the National Skills Authority.
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  • Navigating a foreign land: Obstacles confronting black students Source: University World News In South Africa, where universities remain heavily influenced by Western educational models, black students’ backgrounds significantly influence their chances of graduation. Specifically, factors like home language, economic background and experiences of racism and sexism critically affect whether students can integrate socially and academically.
    This was the finding of a recent study that sought to understand predictors of student attrition and retention. “Universities need to understand the body of students they are dealing with,” said Dr Siyanda Cele, whose research earned him a doctorate in social justice education from the University of KwaZulu-Natal. The findings underscored the need for universities to tailor their offerings to reflect students’ needs and identities.
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  • Five simple suggestions to stem declining student enrolment Source: University World News Hardly a day goes by without some article alerting the reader to the decline in higher education enrolment in colleges and universities around the world. It is also the dominant theme in conferences and podcasts.
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  • SA universities achieve record global rankings in THE Impact Rankings Source: News24 South African universities have continued to make great strides on the global stage, as shown by their impressive placements in the latest Times Higher Education (THE) Impact Rankings. The rankings, which assess universities against the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), highlight significant achievements by institutions in fostering sustainability and social impact.
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  • How to protect young scholars from the managerial machine Source: University World News Academic freedom is essential for high-quality knowledge production, which requires that researchers and teachers have integrity and the courage to seek truth, as well as communicate inconvenient findings to disparate stakeholders, notwithstanding their status and power.  Academics succeed in this challenging endeavour when their institutions have autonomy, and when they enjoy autonomy within their institutions.  As academic practices in post-totalitarian societies show, creating a university which respects academic freedom is difficult. Managerial traditions that prioritise hierarchical relations and administrative control often undermine the freedom of scholars to do research, teach or engage in public outreach. In post-totalitarian regimes, managers often ‘know better’ what professors need to do to achieve institutional success.

 

Skills and Employment

  • MTN puts R14m into digital jobs programme Source: Gadget MTN Foundation has invested R14-million to equip 900 unemployed young South Africans with marketable digital skills. It says the investment in 2024 Digital Skills for Digital Jobs programme is a vote of confidence in the potential of the nation’s youth and a positive long-term step in helping secure South Africa’s place in an increasingly digital global economy.
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  • Huawei readies second phase of ICT talent development Source: ITWeb Huawei has committed to train an additional 150 000 people in Sub-Saharan Africa, through its LEAP digital skills development programme, over the next three years.This, as the company exceeded the initial targets of the ICT skills initiative, said Gao Xiang, president of Huawei Sub-Saharan Africa, announcing the programme’s extension on Friday.
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  • Language diversity key to unlocking artificial intelligence in Africa Source: ITWeb Calls to dismantle the barriers when it comes to the development of artificial intelligence (AI) tools for African audiences have been amplified, with Asian audiences also hearing these pleas. Last week, key industry stakeholders, business leaders, companies and governments gathered for the GSM Association’s MWC 2024 in Shanghai, China, where the focus was on 5G advancements, bridging the digital divide and the transformation of devices in the age of AI. With the rapid advancement of AI, ethical challenges have arisen, including bias in algorithms, privacy infringements and more recently language.
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  • Unemployed youth should consider ‘behind-the-scenes’ retail jobs Source: IOL 
    Through its Academy of Learning, it is this point that the SPAR Group aims to drive home to South African school-leavers and graduates, huge opportunities exist within the retail space, many of which occur outside the walls of the physical store. According to Stats SA, around one in every three South Africans is unemployed, of which just over 40 per cent has matriculated.
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  • Small business clinic at UWC hopes to align graduates with entrepreneurship and jobs Source: IOL  The Small Business Clinic at UWC hopes to expose graduates to entrepreneurship in order to fight unemployment among graduates struggling to find jobs in the formal sector. In terms of social responsibility, higher education institutions should create enabling and empowering spaces where theory can be applied while students are completing their qualifications, not only after graduation, the university said.

 

Teaching and Learning: Local and Global

  • Reimagining South African Higher Education: Towards a Student-Centred Learning and Teaching Future Source: African Sun Media This free publication provides progressive approaches and innovations that challenge readers to rethink student learning, engagement, support, and teaching. The book offers examples of evidence-informed and scholarly approaches to centring students through enhanced learning and teaching practices that are relevant to the South African context and those Global South contexts similar to South Africa.
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  • Five Keys to Motivating Students Source: Faculty Focus A summary  and breakdown of Paul Pintrich's article on student motivation i.e  Pintrich.P. R. (2003). A motivational science perspective on the role of student motivation in learning and teaching contexts. Journal of Educational Psychology, 95 (4), 667-686.
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  • Tips for Pecha Kucha Presentations Source: Faculty Focus The Pecha Kucha presentation style is gaining interest in education. It has many beneficial aspects for students and educators alike. This style requires that a speaker use 20 images, each lasting 20 seconds, to deliver a presentation. This makes the presentation closer to a TedTalk than the usual Death by PowerPoint. The speaker is forced to move out of the covering content mentality to the communicating mentality that makes TedTalks so interesting. This is done not just by shortening the length of the talk, but also by timing the images
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  • HANDBOOK OF ALTERNATIVE ASSESSMENTS Source: Open Library A work in progress, this handbook will serve as a guide for educators seeking innovative methods to assess student learning beyond standardized testing and essays. The goal of this handbook is to inspire, give credit, and connect. It will inspire by providing practical examples, it will give credit by crediting each instructor for the alternative assessment they use, and it will connect by creating a community of instructors who share the same passion for alternative assessments. The “Handbook of Alternative Assessment” is your indispensable guide to reimagining assessment in education.  
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  • AI Text Generators: Sources to Stimulate Discussion Among Teachers Source: Google Docs Compiled by Anna Mills for the Writing Across the Curriculum Clearinghouse as part of a larger resource collection: AI and Teaching Writing: Starting Points for Inquiry. Licensed CC BY NC 4.0. One needs to engage with the list through the chat bot  by asking a question of the AI in Edu Sources bot via the educational nonprofit PlayLab.ai (see the bot’s prompt). The bot should recommend and link to the appropriate section of the list as well as recommending three sources that might be relevant.

 

Technology-Enhanced Learning

  • Global trends in scientific debates on trustworthy and ethical Artificial Intelligence and Education Source: Zenodo This paper presents a systematic review of the scientific literature on trustworthy and ethical Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Education (AI&ED), including both AI applied in education to support teaching and learning (AIED), as well as education about AI (AI literacy). Key interest is the identification of global trends with a special focus on unbalanced disparities.
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  • Virtual reality opens exciting new pathways of learning Source: Mail & Guardian Innovative technologies making use of virtual reality (VR) offer exciting opportunities to educators in higher education. In South Africa, in particular, students are struggling, as evidenced by high dropout and poor pass rates. Up to 60% of first-year students quit during their first year of study, according to some researchers. While there are many reasons students are battling, virtual reality can make a difference in the way they are interacting with their course material, improving their engagement and commitment to their field of study, as well as their speed of learning and the quality of their knowledge retention. Over the past decade, VR has been introduced to learning institutions around the world and initial reports are positive.
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  • SUMMER READING: AI IN EDUCATION Source: MSA Evolution Lab  A list of recommended reads on AI use in Education
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  • [http://AI Agents and Education: Simulated Practice at Scale]AI Agents and Education: Simulated Practice at Scale - Ethan R. Mollick, et al; SSRNThis paper explores the potential of generative AI in creating adaptive educational simulations. By leveraging a system of multiple AI agents, simulations can provide personalized learning experiences, offering students the opportunity to practice skills in scenarios with AI-generated mentors, role-players, and instructor-facing evaluators. We describe a prototype, PitchQuest, a venture capital pitching simulator that showcases the capabilities of AI in delivering instruction, facilitating practice, and providing tailored feedback. The paper discusses the pedagogy behind the simulation, the technology powering it, and the ethical considerations in using AI for education. While acknowledging the limitations and need for rigorous testing, we propose that generative AI can significantly lower the barriers to creating effective, engaging simulations, opening up new possibilities for experiential learning at scale.