Saide Current Awareness
10 June 2024

 

Distance Education

  • Exploring differences between students’ interactions, online presence, and cognitive presence Source: Distance Education The purpose of this research was to examine differences between students at high and low levels of interactions, their perceived online presence (teaching, cognitive, and social), and the level of actual cognitive presence in asynchronous case-based discussions. The results revealed that among three online presences, teaching presence was the highly rated presence among both high and low-interaction students followed by cognitive and social presences. Students were different in the cognitive presence of their perceived abilities to apply knowledge to work or non-class activities. Students’ actual cognitive presence was at exploration and integration levels showing the effectiveness of case-based discussions. This study provided an understanding that low-interaction students still need more support to facilitate cognitive presence. All students reported the need to build a sense of belonging in an online community. This study's findings will guide researchers and practitioners in further design and facilitation of case-based discussions in asynchronous online courses.
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  • UK HE and international online distance learning: Analysing the latest TNE data Source: NeilMosley.Com It’s not been a great year for data in UK higher education (HE). Firstly, the key annual UK HE sector data compiled by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) has suffered multiple publication delays. We’re now expecting to get data on the 22/23 academic year in August. The horse has already bolted by the time we usually get it in January for the previous academic year, but it’s well and truly over the hills and far away now.
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  • Implementing distance learning design approaches: lessons from six impact narratives Source: Distance Education Higher education institutions are increasingly looking to implement online and distance learning (ODL) options for students. Professional development for the design of ODL is needed to support these strategies. This study explores how, in what ways, and to what extent, design for ODL approaches from a series of Learning Design & Course Creation (LDCC) Workshops were implemented. The LDCC Workshop is a mature and substantial professional development activity which adopts a constructivist and student-focused pedagogy and is based on design for ODL approaches embedded at the Open University (UK). The findings illustrate that design for ODL approaches were implemented in all three orientations, but the extent to which they were implemented was dependent on certain institutional enablers being present and/or staff being given opportunities to put into practice what they learnt.


   Education: South Africa

  • Templeton Prize for South Africa’s Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela Source: University World News The 2024 Templeton Prize, one of the world’s largest annual individual grants, has been awarded to Professor Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, a clinical psychologist, author and academic based at Stellenbosch University (SU). She holds the South African Research Chair (SARChI) for Violent Histories and Historical Trauma, is the founding director of the Centre for the Study of the Afterlife of Violence and the Reparative Quest (AVReQ), and serves on the board of the country’s National Research Foundation (NRF).
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  • Ramaphosa unlikely to sign Bela bill into law before new administration is in place Source: Mail and Guardian The Basic Education Law Amendment (Bela) Bill will probably not be signed by President Cyril Ramaphosa before the new administration takes its seats in the National Assembly (NA), said presidency spokesperson Vincent Magwenya.
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  • Education department scraps policy favouring government bursary recipients for teaching posts Source: News24 Teaching graduates, who received the Funza Lushaka bursary and those who were self-funded, will be able to compete equally for teaching posts from now on.
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  • Thousands of learners with disabilities not enrolled in school Source SABCNews Youtube Halfway into the schooling year, it is hard for some to imagine that thousands of school-going-age children in South Africa are not in enrolled in any educational institution. This is a reality for many special needs learners, still waiting to be placed. The University of Pretoria's Centre for Child Law reports that between five hundred thousand and six hundred thousand learners with disabilities are not attending school.
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  • New subjects added for schools in South Africa Source: Business Tech New subjects added for schools in South Africa .The Department of Basic Education has gazetted changes to the National Policy pertaining to the Programme and Promotion Requirements Grades R – 12, officially adding coding and robotics to the subject roster for grades R to 9.

 

Language, Literacies and Research Writing

 

Open Access, Open Education and Open Educational Resources

  • UCT Open Textbook Award: call for nominations Source: UCT Nominations are now open for the 2024 UCT Open Textbook Award. Nominations can be made either by open textbook authors or by a third party. The deadline for nominations is 28 July 2024.
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  • Unisa Enhances Partnership With The Commonwealth Of Learning Source: IndiaEducationDiary CoL is an Intergovernmental organisation whose mandate is to promote the use of open and distance education knowledge, resources and technologies in institutions in the Commonwealth. In a seminar hosted by Unisa’s College of Education, Scott provided focused insight on advancing open education and fostering innovation in practices, systems and policies.
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   Post Schooling

  • QS Rankings: Africa’s best shine in research networking Source: University World News South Africa has once again emerged as Africa’s higher education powerhouse as some of its universities are the continent’s best resourced and most sustainable and have a thriving research ecosystem supported by international partnerships, according to the 21st edition of the QS World University Rankings 2025.
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  • Transforming higher education access Source: UCT Aligned with the University of Cape Town’s Vision 2030, UCT’s 100UP programme is a cornerstone of the university’s commitment to social responsiveness. It supports academically strong learners from disadvantaged backgrounds by providing them with the support needed to access higher education.
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  • University of Pretoria gets new VC. His hallmark is consensus Source: University World News Seven years after being welcomed to lead a campus in the judicial heartland of South Africa, Professor Francis William Petersen, the vice-chancellor of the University of the Free State (UFS), is moving to the country’s administrative capital as the new vice-chancellor and principal of the University of Pretoria (UP), one of Africa’s leading research institutions.
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  • Start-up universities inject new energy into the HE system Source: University World News Twelve years ago, an astronomer from a liberal arts college and an ethicist from a research university walked into a bar in Chicago. Despite our different backgrounds, over hazy IPAs we discovered a mutual frustration with the ways in which colleges and universities imitate each other in a race for improved college rankings and prestige.
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  • UK funds should benefit women, girls in Africa most – scientist  Source: University World News The United Kingdom (UK) has announced a £45 million (about US$57 million) higher education programme that will benefit women and girls in five regions, including Africa. An award-winning scientist says the bulk of the funds must benefit Africans as their continent has the highest rates of education exclusion.To mark the beginning of the Education World Forum on 20 May 2024, the British Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office said in a statement the funds will benefit Sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia and the Middle East.
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  • Quality and diversity: the main challenges facing higher education Source: University World News 
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  • DUT students shine in Chinese language competition Source: Witness Durban University of Technology (DUT) has upheld its excellent record in Chinese language skills, ranking high in a competition for the second year in a row.DUT students Sinegugu Nyaka and Aphile Ngcobo excelled at the 23rd “Chinese Bridge” Chinese Proficiency Competition held recently in Cape Town. Ngcobo, a mechanical engineering student, delivered an outstanding performance, placing fourth out of 13 contestants from universities across the country.
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Skills and Employment

 

Teaching and Learning: Local and Global

  • AI and Unequal Knowledge in the Global South Source: NORRAG Global Education Centre  In this blogpost, which was previously published in NORRAG’s 4th Policy Insights publication on “AI and Digital Inequalities”, Alejandro Artopolous reflects upon the three levels of AI’s digital inequalities — the sociolinguistic nature of textual generative AI, AI literacy as human cognitive capacity and digital education policy.
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  • AI and the Digitalisation of Education: Challenges and Opportunities  Source: NORRAG Global Education Centre This curated blog series welcomes blog contributions from education practitioners, policy makers and researcher-practitioners in particular fom experts whose perspectives may be under-represented in international education policy discussions, including from the Global South. The series invites empirically-grounded and critical contributions on the challenges and opportunities of AI and the digitisation of education, including the following themes: 
    • Datafication, surveillance, ethical challenges and citizenship
    • Governance of AI, privatisation and “multistakeholderism”
    • Diversity and digital divides 
    • Technological and AI colonialism and “decolonising technology or AI”
    • The right to education, quality, equity and social justice in education
    • Government procurement, value creation models, and financialisation
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  • UNESCO launches new initiatives for “greening education” in classrooms Source: UNESCO On World Environment Day, UNESCO unveils new tools for greening schools and curricula, highlighting the need to empower young people to play a concrete role in tackling the climate crisis.
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  • Discourses on Learning in Education This site offers a survey of some of the responses that have emerged in the western world, aiming to enable informed debate by highlighting key similarities and differences among discourses on learning, along with their entailments for teaching and research. Designed more as a dictionary than an encyclopedia, the site includes descriptions of more than 5000 discourses, subdiscourses, and consequential constructs, providing information on their foci, themes, imagery, and supporting evidence. Brief genealogical details are also included, especially for those discourses with diverse interpretations and/or multiple subdiscourses.
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  • Deep Reading Will Save Your Soul Source: Persuasion Real learning has become impossible in universities. DIY programs offer a better way “William Deresiewicz writes about the crisis in higher education, and a new trend of students and teachers abandoning traditional universities for self-fashioned liberal arts programs. He describes their desire to unplug from technology, find time for creativity and solitude, and escape the pressures of universities seeking ‘relevance’ and markets pushing productivity. These programs focus on learning for its own sake, which, he argues, is real freedom” 
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  • Asynchronous Strategies for Inclusive Teaching Source: Harriet W. Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning The hallmark of asynchronous learning activities is that students do not participate at the same time. While some activities like watching recorded mini-lectures and taking online quizzes could be conceived as stand-alone activities, effective asynchronous activities create a series of dialogues between instructors and students as well as among students. This resource provides strategies for asynchronous course design and examples of concrete activities and assignments. 
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  • Beyond blended: rethinking curriculum and learning design Source: JISC A guide to help curriculum teams consider the pedagogic differences between in place and online learning, and the need to balance flexibility with the specific needs of students.

 

Technology-Enhanced Learning

  • How AI & New Tech Will Impact Higher Ed Source: HigherEdDive If AI takes over more work of college graduates, where does that leave higher education? Explore the latest technology trends impacting universities in this Trendline
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  • Resources-EmTech  Source: State University of New York  A suite of digital tools compiled by the State University of New York's Exploring Emerging Technologies for Lifelong Learning and Success. 
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  • Perplexity AI’s new feature will turn your searches into shareable pages Source: TechCrunch  AI-powered summaries of web pages are a feature that you will find in many AI-centric tools these days. The next step for some of these tools is to prepare detailed and well-formatted web pages for your search queries. The Arc browser is doing this to some extent through its Arc Search app. Apple is rumored to soon release its own smart recap feature for web pages and articles. The latest addition to this trend is Perplexity AI.
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  • Harnessing the Power of Synthesia for Open and Distance Education Source:LinkedIn Synthesia is an AI video generation platform that allows users to create professional videos using AI avatars and natural language processing. This innovative technology has significant implications for educators, students, and educational institutions striving to deliver quality education remotely.