About the course

Welcome to this CHEC short course on Emerging Technologies to Improve Teaching and Learning for higher educators at the four Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in the Western Cape.

Internationally and in South Africa, emphasis is increasingly being placed on the professional development of lecturers with regards to teaching, curriculum design and assessment.  The changing profile of our student populations, developments with emerging technologies, the increasing pressure on academics as well as the greater spotlight on student success and relevance, provide impetus for the trend towards support for the professional development of lecturers. The Cape Higher Education Consortium (CHEC) is offering seven courses for lecturers in the Western Cape during 2013, one of which is this course on Emerging Technologies for Improving Teaching and Learning. The motivation for presenting the module across institutional boundaries is that we believe that it is possible to learn a great deal from others across contexts and knowledge realms.

This course will provide a unique opportunity for academics from the four HEIs in the Western Cape to come together in a relaxed and supportive atmosphere to learn, discuss and benefit from the valuable experiences of peers and expert facilitators from the four institutions in our region regarding the use of technologies for improved teaching and learning in Higher Education. All participants will receive a certificate for this course from CHEC. At this stage, this short course is not formally accredited, however in the future when the Post Graduate Diploma in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, some credit towards the elective module on ICTs in Teaching and Learning may be given.

This short course will give you an experience of how technologies can be used to enhance your own teaching and learning in higher education. In the course, you will have the opportunity to analyse your current context in relation to pedagogic problems, your students’ learning needs and current available technologies. You will then have the opportunity to design and develop a small-scale learning activity using at least one technology tool suitable to the context in which you work, and formatively evaluate this learning activity with one peer and or a student/s of your choice. In the last session you will present this learning activity in the form of a case study to the course participants and the facilitators.

The course has been limited to 24 participants from the four HEIs. The minimum requirements for your participation is a basic knowledge of ICTs for teaching and learning, e.g. use of productivity tools such as word processing, presentation tools, a learning management system, or some interest in Web 2.0 tools.  In this course we will be foregrounding how to address issues in your own context, the pedagogical challenges you are experiencing and the process of addressing these challenges with potential  tools which may be useful. As you are aware, we conducted a pre-course survey to establish skills and learning needs in this area. This will be discussed in the first session.

How would you benefit from participating in this short course?

• Deepening your learning about using emerging technologies in higher education teaching and learning
• Enhancing your knowledge of your context, available technologies and your students’ needs as a helpful resource in higher education
• Reducing isolation and creating community across boundaries of discipline and institution
• Learning more about designing and developing a technology-enhanced activity for your own context
• Reflecting on and evaluating your learning experience

You would have the opportunity to gain the above capacities through engaging in the following activities:

• Engaging in individual and collaborative experiential exercises both face-to-face through online and social media spaces
• Accessing and reading relevant literature in the field
• Exploring contexts and student needs
• Designing and developing a learning intervention using an appropriate technology
• Formatively evaluating this learning activity
• Presenting this as a case study to the course participants and facilitators
• Reflecting on and evaluating your learning activity and your learning experience
• You will be asked to complete both online and face-to-face tasks which are short but may be time consuming. However, we hope it will be worth your while and that you will gain substantially from your participation on the course.