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Critical Dialogue and Strategic Initiatives Dominated Talks at Symposium

Critical Dialogue and Strategic Initiatives Dominated Talks at Symposium

Providing a platform to critically assess and share reflective insights on learning, teaching and assessment, formed part of the 5th Learning, Teaching and Assessment Symposium, which took place at the Coastlands Hotel in Musgrave recently.

Issues such as transformative curricula, graduate attributes, first year student experiences and innovations in teaching and learning dominated talks at the three-day symposium.

Welcoming guests to the event, DUT’s Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Professor Thandi Gwele said that at DUT various initiatives were aimed at enhancing student access and have been underway for the last five years.

“The 2015-2019 DUT Strategic Plan identifies two strategic focus areas which are building sustainable student communities of living and learning; and building a learning organisation, which resonates with the focus of the symposium,” she said. She further added that the symposium was an excellent space for sharing ideas through critical and constructive dialogue.

 

Reiterating the importance of such a symposium, DUT Director of CELT, Prof Thengani Ngwenya added that discussions emanating from such a symposium constituted a vital contribution to the ongoing process of organisational learning at DUT, as the University seeks to position itself as an important player in the South African post-school education and training sector.

The main keynote speaker at the event, Prof Ronald Barnett, gave a glimpse of teaching and research and the possibility for new relations, adding that across the world much effort is going on to raise the research profile of universities. “One of the outcomes of this development is the wish to bring research and teaching into a closer relationship, especially by bringing research elements into the curriculum and into student learning. This major shift is posing challenging to many universities, both to teaching intensive institutions and those that would see themselves as research intensive,” he said. His presentations at the symposium focused on the pressures on academics’ workloads, challenges in writing, as well as shared some issues reflecting his own experiences over a lifetime in higher education. Besides looking at teaching and research, Prof Barnett also spoke on the ecological curriculum, and what is necessary to be a University in the 21st century. He added that what was needed was a hope that higher education can help to develop students as future members of society. “Many broad features of the future are known and present with social and personal instabilities. Secondly, skills – even when accompanied by knowledge – are inadequate in helping to develop human beings in such a challenging world. What are needed are states of being-in-the-world, which could include- purposeful engagement, global citizenship and a concern for the world. Thirdly, a genuine higher education has to concern itself with interior dimensions of graduates as critically self-reflective and self-organising,” stressed Prof Barnett.

Prof Ronald Barnett is Emeritus Professor of Higher Education at the Institute of Education, London (where he was both Dean of Professional Development and (subsequently) Pro-Director for Longer Term Strategy). In his academic work, he has been trying to advance a social philosophy of the University, in which he has been attempting to identify creative concepts and practical principles that offer ways of enhancing universities and higher education.

His (28) books include The Idea of Higher EducationThe Limits of Competence, Realizing the University in an age of super complexity, and A Will to Learn: Being a Student in an Age of Uncertainty. He is also the author of over 100 papers and the inaugural recipient of the EAIR Award for ‘Outstanding Contribution to Higher Education Research, Policy and Practice’ and has had a higher doctorate of the University of London conferred upon and holds Fellowships of the Academy of the Social Sciences, the Society for Research into Higher Education and the Higher Education Academy.

The second keynote speaker, Dr Megandhren Govender, a popular and well-known astrophysicist, and associate professor in the Department of Mathematics at the Durban University of Technology (DUT), enthralled academic delegates attending the symposium, with his spell-binding and riveting live performance that combined physics, mathematics, technology and engineering.

“I have taken a different approach to teaching and understanding physics. Instead of being caught up in a web of mathematics, I approach the understanding of physical phenomena from a conceptual vantage point. The real trick is to get the student to understand physical phenomena without getting constipated with the accompanying mathematics,” he said.

Dr Megandhren Govender is also a research associate of the Astrophysics and Cosmology Research Unit, School of Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Sciences, UKZN.

Giving more insight into transformative learning was economist and associate professor at DUT’s Riverside campus, Alex van der Merwe. He spoke on students having access to free, open textbooks which may form a significant part of a long term solution to the current finding crises in higher education worldwide.

DUT’s Prof Anthony Collins’ paper delved on decolonial teaching and transformative learning, which was well-received. He explored an array of issues ranging from ways to mobilising students’ emotional commitments into the learning process, scaffolding existing popular literacies to support academic learning, and creating forms of participation that are transformative for not only the students, but for lecturers and the nature of the courses themselves.

Prof Barrett concluded the symposium, adding that universities were not going to save the world but needed to do their bit. “Universities must work together and think going forward in a more optimistic frame of mind,” he said.

Pictured: Keynote speaker at the event, Prof Ronald Barnett.

—Waheeda Peters

 

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