Projects
Internationally funded projects
WISH - Widening Success in Higher Education – a ‘British Council Researcher Links’ workshop (2017)
WISH is a development initiative that brings together early career researchers, educators, practitioners, employers and policy makers from the UK and South Africa to develop realisable projects that increase the quality, range and number of opportunities for diverse students in, and beyond, the creative industries. It is looking to:
- Widen access to Higher Education
- Increase participation within Higher Education
- Ensure student success
- Enhance employability
WISH is managed by the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) and the University of East London (UEL). For more information visit http://www.cput.ac.za/blogs/wish Role: main project leader, total budget: 640.000 ZAR
STORY Abroad: validating and connecting experiences of working and Studying abroad through digital storytelling (2015-2016)
StoryA is a project funded by the EU and consisting of nine international partners. Through a series of initiatives –international meetings, seminars and conferences, local workshops and cultural activities– the project aims at enhancing the use digital storytelling, to guide young people to self-evaluate their competences and capabilities acquired abroad. The purpose is to improve the quality and the recognition of youth work and non-formal learning by encouraging young people to turn their life and working experiences gained in foreign countries into learning opportunities recognising the skills and key competences acquired during the mobility. Living or working abroad, for a short or long period, are unconscious informal learning moments that can be turned into more useful experiences if one encourages people to reflect upon it and share them. The project contributes to strengthen the role of youth in the society and speed up the process of active participation in South Africa and beyond. Role: local project lead, total budget: app 300.000 ZAR. Link to project website.
Nationally funded projects
Reconfiguring higher education: Doing academia differently (2020-2022)The proposed project aims at developing opportunities to re-imagine how to do higher education - in ways which would encourage different ways of doing scholarship, while taking neoliberal effects into critical consideration. The project will involve Southern and Northern participants, who will participate in a series of experimental workshops using various modes and methodologies, which project members can then take to their own contexts and examine further ways of doing scholarship differently there engaging with issues such as decolonialities, indigenous knowledges; Slow scholarship; arts-based pedagogies/research and hauntology; neurotypicality and the undercommons; reconfigurings of methodology; and posthuman ethics and the political ethics of care. Role: Collaborator.
Reconceptualising socially just pedagogies across diverse geopolitical settings in higher education (NRF project 2017-2019)
This research project will be using findings and theoretical frameworks from previous research projects to develop new insights into socially just pedagogical practices in higher education, as well as engaging in different ways of disseminating these theoretical frameworks in both traditional and innovative ways. In order to accomplish this, we will be using a diffractive methodology as the main approach for the project. Role: Collaborator.
A Multi-Dimensional and Integrated Exploration of Inequalities in South African Higher Education: Effects on Students (2017-2019)
This multi-institutional project investigates how inequalities intersect and feed on each other to adversely affect students from marginalised groups. It will further examine how inequalities manifest themselves among students from various backgrounds (race, class, gender, ethnic, etc), as well as how HEIs perpetuate inequalities among students by producing and reproducing them. The research questions that this project purports to answer are: What are manifestations of inequalities among students in the selected HEIs? How do these inequalities intersect and feed on each other? What intellectual, academic and psychological effects do they have on students from different (racial, cultural, ethnic, geographical, socio-economic and gender) backgrounds? What efforts do HEIs make to address and redress these inequalities and are these strategies coherent and integrated to yield sustainable improvements on students’ lives? Role: Collaborator.
STIAS Effects of Race project (2015-2017)
The STIAS Effects of Race project project will address major gaps in our knowledge on race thinking and racialism. The project is informed by the need for further research and reflection on “race,” especially in the context of contesting visions for a democratic South Africa. EoR will catalyze innovative and imaginative approaches to ‘finding race’ and dealing with the “everydayness of race,” in order that the “reality” of race can be eroded. Thus, the primary goal of the EoR project is to inform social change through challenging and undermining existing notions of racial difference. The research work conducted under EoR will include individual and group projects undertaken by STIAS Fellows and by select outside scholars who successfully proposed projects for support under the initiative. The current roster of EoR researchers includes sociologists, philosophers, writers, lawyers, theologians, psychologists, anthropologists, and educators. Role: Collaborator. Link to project website.
'Exploring being human with final year pre-service teachers: designing a teaching intervention to engage with difference in a critical, anti-racist and reconciliatory way (2015-2017)
This project funded by STIAS aims to design, implement and evaluate practical interventions to 1. raise student teachers’ awareness of systemic inequalities that are inherent in South Africa’s society, and 2. to explore with these student teachers how they may intentionally or unintentionally reproduce social injustices and inequalities in their own teaching practice. This project is linked to Professional Studies, a course offered on final year level in the School for Education and Social Sciences at CPUT. Role: Co-investigator.
‘Posthumanism, the Affective Turn and social just pedagogies’ (2014-2016)
This National Research Foundation (NRF) funded project is intended to investigate the potential of a new theoretical framework framed by the affective turn and post-humanism for the implementation of critical and socially just higher education pedagogies. This theoretical framework will help develop innovative pedagogical practices in higher education that could respond more productively to the challenges facing South African Higher Education. Role: Collaborator.
'Participatory parity and transformative pedagogies for qualitative outcomes in higher education' (2014-2016)
This NRF funded research project examines both students' experiences related to participatory parity in achieving qualitative outcomes as well as higher educators' experiences of using transformative pedagogies to make it possible for students to achieve these outcomes. The focus of the research is on particular disciplines and professions in differently located and positioned HEIs. In order to accomplish this, it investigates the enablements and constraints that students experience in different professions and higher education institutions in being able to participate as peers in achieving qualitative outcomes in education. Secondly, and building upon this knowledge, it investigates how transformative pedagogical practices can be used to enable students to achieve qualitative outcomes. Role: Collaborator.
Analysing the impact of digital storytelling in Pre-Service Teaching Education (2012-2014)
This NRF funded project aims to study the impact of skilling pre-service teachers with digital storytelling on their readiness to teach multicultural classrooms effectively. Thus the project will utilise digital storytelling by CPUT pre-service teachers as a tool to explorer perceptions and competencies for teaching diverse classrooms. This project was designed as a response to research which shows that most South African teachers join the profession ill-equipped to handle diverse classrooms. It is hoped that this project will help teachers to intentionally create a culturally sensitive learning community through the use of digital storytelling. This project is funded by the National Research Fund. Role: Co-investigator.
Emerging Technologies in Higher Education (2011-2013)
Project website: http://emergingicts.blogspot.com/
The NRF project "Emerging ICTs in Higher Education", is a joint project by eight institutions of Higher Education in South Africa. The study investigated how qualitative outcomes in education can be realised through the use of emerging technologies to transform teaching and learning interactions and paradigms across differently positioned higher education institutions in South Africa. The intention of the project was to develop models to improve quality fore redressing inequalities in Africa. Role: Co-investigator.
Institutionally funded projects
Strategies of increasing departmental buy-in into blended learning – an e-learning champions’ perspective (2020)
Currently, the Centre for Innovative Educational Technology (CIET), responsible for driving institutional adoption, employs a strategy that is focused partly on so-called eLearning champions, with the aim of strengthening these early adopters to support the buy-in across departments and to act as departmental and institutional ‘change agents’. This study is aimed at evaluating CIET’s strategy for drive adoption of blended learning through eLearning champions. We will look at eLearning champions’ impact in their departments, the strategies that eLearning champions have and could employ to support departmental buy-in into innovative teaching and learning with technology, in order to finally develop guidelines for broader adoption of blended learning in departments and Faculties. As part of this study we will run departmental workshops to design models and approaches to enhance departmental buy-in through eLearning champions. Role: principle investigator.
The purpose of this investigative study is to use the blended learning academic staff development short course as an action research project. The researchers will collaborate with academic and technical staff members from the Centre of Innovative Educational Technology (CIET) and a selected number of academic departments at the institution to explore the dynamic relationship between programme design and programme delivery foregrounding blended learning approaches in the conceptualisation phase of NQF level 8 qualifications at CPUT. This action research project will use Kolb’s experiential learning cycle (1984) consisting of (i) concrete experience; (ii) reflective observation; (iii) abstract conceptualisation and (iv) active experimentation as organizing framework. As suggested by Kolb (1984:38) “learning is the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience”, hence the learning gained from this pilot study will contribute meaningfully to the creation of new knowledge regarding the thoughtful fusion of programme/curriculum design and programme delivery through the use of flexible pedagogic approaches and innovative educational technologies in HEQSF aligned Postgraduate Diplomas and B Honours degrees at the institution. Role: principle investigator.
Towards an analytical framework for ethical practices of digital storytelling at CPUT (2018)
Digital storytelling has been embraced in educational settings because of its potential “to empower participants through personal reflection, growth, and the development of new literacies” (Gubrium et al. 2014). At CPUT it has increased digital literacies and student engagement, provided a space for reflection and improved management of multicultural classrooms (Condy et al. 2012; Ivala et al. 2013). However, adopting this emotional and process-oriented practice into an educational context, with its constraints of course objectives, assessment regimes, timetables and large classes, raises ethical concerns. What support and follow-up mechanisms exist to help students cope with any emotional fallout? Is it ethical to mark these stories? How well equipped are educators to handle strong emotions and difficult dialogues in the classroom (Landis 2008)? How would one go about writing about the digital stories collected? This is an area that is under-researched. This project will build on previous projects at CPUT and collect narratives of lecturers involved in digital storytelling to attempt to develop an analytical framework to help lecturers navigate the complex space of using digital storytelling in teaching, community work and research in an ethical fashion. Role: principle investigator.
Developing and co-designing a model for decolonising the curriculum through a short course on critical compassionate citizenship (2018)
One of the first challenges lecturers face when attempting to decolonise the undergraduate curriculum is resistance from students who are used to teacher-centred models of teaching and learning and resist new, more open and inquiry-based teaching and learning approaches. The aim of the project is to develop a shared, active, critical theories-based course for staff, students and the wider community on critical compassionate citizenship while identifying a new model for co-designing the curriculum. The key focus of the project will be how to implement co-design of curriculum across different institutions with different curriculum requirements in South Africa and later the United Kingdom. Role: Co-investigator.
Design Thinking for Academic Staff Development (2016-2017)
Internationally and locally, there is a trend towards design thinking and learning design. Design thinking as a methodology for developing novel solutions to complex, real-world problems, is gaining popularity in various domains. For many years design thinking provided a useful approach for innovating in business, health, software development and engineering sectors but it is only recently gaining ground in the context of Higher Education innovation. Learning design implies that learning innovation starts with ‘wicked’ problems that need holistically designed interventions. This project is aimed at designing and evaluating an academic staff intervention on blended learning course design applying design thinking principles and promoting a design thinking mindset among academics. Role: Principal investigator.
Towards flexible learning at CPUT (2017)
Based on a changing student population, the demand for flexible, part-time course offerings is increasing globally and nationally-inclusive of CPUT. Recently, CPUT introduced two flexible learning courses, which offer an online component to broaden access, namely the blended part-time BTech Architectural Technology and the online National Diploma in Real Estate. These two courses will be the focus of this study, which is aimed at identifying the main learning design principles common to both case studies. Following on that, any tensions and contradictions will be considered in order to identify areas for improvement. In addition, these principles might be employed to design future flexible learning interventions. Role: Co-investigator.
Open@CPUT (2015-2016)
The purpose of this study funded by RIFTAL is to map out the openness of CPUT as an institution and how and with what impact CPUT academic staff members and students are participating in the open educational resources movement and Open research (open sharing and dissemination of research). The long-term goal of the project is to promote the idea of OERs and Open research to CPUT staff members and students’ as making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge and enhanced prestige and contribution to development . CPUT’s participating in OERs movement may also go a long way in addressing the problem of the cost of university textbooks and contribute to local content, context and case studies. The project consists of benchmarking visits, a baseline survey and the design and implementation of OER pilots. Role: Co-investigator.
An evaluation of CPUT teaching and learning with technology staff development strategies (2014-2015)
The Centre for e-learning has been involved in staff development activities in teaching and learning with technology for over a decade, while the Educational Technology Unit, Fundani CHED, has participated in similar work for 4 years. Over these years of practice, the effectiveness of the staff development strategies employed has never been measured. Thus, this study will focus on evaluating the effectiveness of CPUT teaching and learning with technology staff development strategies by administering a survey and conducting follow up interviews, with an aim of improving the training based on the needs of CPUT staff members. The project is funded by RIFTAL. Role: Principal investigator.
Digital storytelling at CPUT (2012)
This project funded by the CPUT University Reserach fund (URF) was aimed to transfer experiences gathered in the Education pilot into other departments at CPUT (Nursing, Graphic Design, Architectural Technology, Industrial Design). The aim of this project was to develop different models of integrating Digital Storytelling into the Curriculum. Role: Co-investigator.
Podcasting@CPUT (2012)
This project funded by the CPUT RIFTAL fund investigated the use of podcasting in teaching and learning at CPUT. 20 lecturers at CPUT were equipped with digital recorders and trained in recording, editing and disseminating podcasts for their students. More information on the project can be found on the project wiki: podcastingatcput.wikispaces.com Role: Principal investigator (total budget: ZAR 45.000)
Use of clickers at CPUT (2011-2013)
This project investigated the use of clickers in three courses at CPUT, using cultural-historical Activity Theory (CHAT) as theoretical and analytical framework. By employing the method of change laboratories, the use of clickers in the classroom was evaluated, to assess possible contradictions, and in collaboration with staff members models were developed to improve current teaching practices involving clickers. Role: Principal investigator (total budget: ZAR 41.000)
Digital Storytelling in Education (2011)
This Research in Innovation in Teaching and Learning (RIFTAL) funded research project was aimed to describe, evaluate and research the use of digital storytelling as an innovative teaching and learning practice for pre-service student teachers at CPUT Education Faculty. Digital storytelling facilitates the convergence of four student-centered learning strategies: student engagement, reflection for deep learning, project-based learning, and the effective integration of technology into teaching. Role: Co-investigator.
Cape Peninsula University of Technology ICT survey (2010-2011)
The Educational Technology Unit, Fundani and the eLearning center carried out an institution-wide survey for staff and students on their access, use and perception on Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) at CPUT. This project is partly funded through the CPUT RIFTAL (Research in Innovation in Teaching and Learning) fund. Results of this study informed policy-making around educational technology development at CPUT, and proved invaluable to the university in gaining a real sense of how staff and students experience ICT at the institution, to increase access to ICTs and to improve the quality of learning in the future. Role: Principal Investigator (total budget: ZAR 36.100)
Vanguard Course Initiative at the College of Science and Engineering, University of Edinburgh (2007-2008)
The launching of the Vanguard Courses in the Academic Year 06-07 was the first stage of the College's implementation of the Learning and Teaching Strategy. The principal aim of the Vanguard Courses was to initiate a cultural shift in approaches and attitudes to student learning through selected courses in the College. This involved a modification in styles of teaching and expectations of staff together with the education of students such that they acknowledge a greater self-responsibility and professional attitude towards learning. Role: Member of project team (eLearning advisor). More information under http://www.scieng.ed.ac.uk/LTStrategy/index.html
Benchmarking for Online Courses, University of Botswana (2003-2005)
As part of the 6th University of Botswana Internal Research Funding Round the Educational Technology Unit embarked in cooperation with the Programme Review Unit on a study to develop guidelines for best practices in Web-based courses and/or programmes and to create a quality assessment tool for online courses, called the benchmarking rubric. Role: Principle Investigator (total budget: ZAR 20.000)
eLearning pilots at the University of Botswana (2003/2004)
As part of the 5th University of Botswana Internal Research Funding Round the Educational Technology Unit (EduTech) of the Centre for Academic Development (CAD) selected eight eLearning pilot projects representing each of the six Faculties, the Communication and Study Skills Unit (CSSU) and the Library of the University of Botswana in December 2003 to develop best practice models in eLearning for the University. Role: Member of eLearning Support Team. Role: Instructional Designer
