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Tony Mays reports on the 2011 NADEOSA Conference.
On 29 and 30 August 2011, the National Association for Distance Education and Open Learning (NADEOSA) hosted its annual general meeting and conference at St. John's College in Houghton, Johannesburg.
The theme of the conference was Realising the potential of ODL with the following sub-themes open for exploration :
- Building a robust post-schooling ODL sector
- Improving pass rates and throughput in undergraduate ODL programmes
- Improving ODL's contribution to the supply of graduates with scarce skills
- Making ODL a more attractive option for post-graduate study.
Unfortunately, the 2011 conference dates were in conflict with major activities at Unisa, including a Vice-Chancellor's Lekgotla and preparations for Unisa's largely internal Teaching and Learning Festival, and also clashed with a high priority meeting called by the Ministry of Higher Education and Training. This, among other constraints, led to the 2011 conference being fairly small – some 72 participants were scheduled to attend – and thus in his opening remarks, the current Nadeosa President, Prof LJ Van Niekerk, described the conference as “boutique” in nature in comparison with the larger event organised successfully in partnership with North West University in 2010. One advantage of the smaller size, however, was that it offered the opportunity for more discussion of the papers presented in the generous 45 minute timeslots availed.
The plenary session that opened the conference proceedings involved a short, but meaty video presentation by the Vice President of the Commonwealth of Learning (COL), Professor Asha Kanwar, on COL's lessons of experience in working with OER, with responses from a panel chaired by Saide's Jenny Glennie, with representatives from three South African institutions with large ODL enrolments – Unisa (Louis J Van Niekerk), NWU (Bertus le Roux) and UP (Johan Hendrikz). This provided a follow-through on an ongoing discussion on the potential and lessons of OER for ODL over the past three annual conferences.
On the second day of the conference, Dr Phil Ice, Vice President of Research and Development of the American Public University System, gave a stimulating and inspiring address on the potential of predictive analytics to help institutions identify and engage with at-risk students. It was noted that the number of students involved in the original pilot was equivalent in size to the entire higher education system in South Africa and allowed for updated information, with a 92% predictive accuracy to date, on a four-hourly basis within the host institution and on a weekly basis across the varied institutions involved in the pilot.
Later, Prof George Subotzky led a team from Unisa which explored blended learning, enrolment patterns and improving student retention and graduate quality which complemented Dr Ice's keynote address perfectly.
Although Nadeosa is a ‘national' association, value was added to the discussions by presentations from, or based on, experience in neighbouring countries including Lesotho, Swaziland, Mozambique and Botswana as well as further afield, including Mauritius, Nigeria and Saudi-Arabia.
Tony Mays also presented on an ongoing Nadeosa special project to explore the cost and human resource implications of different models of ODL provision. The wider Nadeosa community is invited to engage with this ongoing discussion. The documents related to this Nadeosa special project, as well as the other interesting and varied papers delivered at the conference, should be available on the Nadeosa website progressively over the next few weeks (and archives of past conference papers can also be accessed on the website. |
