Zizipho Mdletye, a lecturer at the Media, Language and Communications Department (English and Communication Programme) at the Durban University of Technology (DUT) was featured as a podcast guest at the Higher Education Reform Experts-South Africa (HERESA), a special edition for Young Academics. The podcast was recently hosted on Zoom.
The Young Academics in the Age of COVID-19 is a podcast series that was aimed at generating dialogue amongst academics about the difficulties they experienced during the pandemic. Mdletye was given a platform to share her experiences with online teaching, supporting students remotely, what she learnt from those experiences as well as what higher education institutions can do to be better prepared for future pandemics/disasters.
Mdletye, who is currently busy with her PhD, writing a book chapter, editing a manuscript for resubmission to a journal, shared that she will be presenting her research at three conferences during semester two, namely, the South African Education Research Association, South African Communications Association and the DUT Social Sciences and Humanities Conference.
She was asked to provide feedback on how she provides emotional support for her students. Mdletye went in depth explaining the importance of catering to the needs of students.
“I think we always need to make sure that as lecturers we find a balance, in as much as we are empathic towards our students and in as much as there is an understanding that we need to be there for them, and we need to almost be like-in addition to lecturing, a pillar of strength of some sort. We also need to be aware that we are not professional counsellors, one must ask themselves how far they can go in terms of providing emotional support to students,” said Mdletye.
The aim of the podcast was to provide a platform for the experiences and voices of early-to-mid career academics. When asked what was her immediate response when DUT announced that she would be transitioning from in-person-teaching to online and remote teaching modalities, Mdletye responded: “It was daunting as it’s not something anyone had anticipated or planned for, it was literally a matter of diving in and trying to find ways to adjust our teaching in a way that would suit the needs of the students and educators. It was quite rushed but also an eye opener, in terms of just always being ready for change in any work environment, whether we are looking at the higher education sector and other industries that needed to adjust as much as we did. I think also, it came with a bit of excitement for the new changes that were being implemented and I am learning more about technological and innovative ways of teaching.”
Mdletye was grateful to be given such an opportunity to share her experiences, she enjoyed engaging with other academics and listening to how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted their work.
Pictured: DUT lecturer, Zizipho Mdletye.
Nikiwe Sukazi
