Saide Current Awareness
25 September 2024

 

Distance Education

  • Providing a Second Chance through Distance Education Source: International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science This paper delves into the concept of providing a second chance specifically within the context of distance education. It explores the unique challenges faced by distance learners and the importance of offering opportunities for redemption, growth, and academic success. Through the lens of factors such as accessible instructor communication, synchronous and asynchronous interaction, and personalized support, the abstract highlights the significance of providing avenues for clarification, engagement, and flexibility. It examines how second chances in distance education empower learners to overcome obstacles, address learning gaps, and achieve their educational goals. By embracing inclusivity, adaptability, and continuous improvement, educators and institutions can ensure that distance learners receive the support and resources necessary to thrive academically in remote learning environments
  • Challenges and strategies in e-learning adoption in emerging economies: a scoping review Source: Cogent Education This scoping review examines the critical factors influencing e-learning implementation in emerging economies. Using a comprehensive literature search across major databases, 191 records were screened, of which 127 were assessed for eligibility and 84 studies met the inclusion criteria. Our systematic approach revealed four key themes: critical success factors, critical failure factors, implementation recommendations, and future research directions in e-learning. The findings illuminate the nascent stage of e-learning adoption in emerging economies, highlighting both the potential for enhanced educational access and multifaceted challenges faced by these nations.

Education: South Africa

  • Teachers stand to lose posts as SA’s provincial education departments face a budget shortfall of billions of rands Source: Daily Maverick The various provincial governments have been spending less and less on teachers over the past decade, which a number of education experts say has compromised the quality of education, especially for those children in underprivileged communities.
  • South Africa has a new education law: some love it, some hate it – education expert explains why Source: The Conversation South Africa has a new law governing education. The Basic Education Laws Amendment (BELA) Act changes several aspects of how schools are managed. It was introduced to address inequalities in the school system by standardising rules on admissions, language policies, discipline, and even the operation of homeschooling. But it has sparked controversy. Education professor Wayne Hugo answers questions about the act.
  • Bela Bill seeks to bring SA’s education system in line with Constitution, say civil society bodies Source: Daily Maverick President Cyril Ramaphosa signed the Bela Bill into law in the face of vehement opposition from political parties and lobby groups. However, civil society organisations that Daily Maverick spoke to have welcomed the adoption of the Bill.
  • Countdown to final exams for Class of 2024 Source: SAGov With just under a month to go to the start of this year’s National Senior Certificate (NSC) exams, matrics all around the country will put shoulder to wheel in preparation for the final exams of their basic education careers. The examinations are set to run from 21 October to 27 November 2024, and marking will commence immediately thereafter.
  • VAPSA shines a light on dedicated ECD teachers Source: IOL Several Early Childhood Development (ECD) practitioners and centres in the Vaal community have been recognised and awarded for creating a positive impact on the lives of young children and displaying outstanding excellence in their line of work by the Vaal Preschool Association (VAPSA) this past Saturday.
  • Wi-Fi initiative transforms learning in Alexandra Source: Daily Maverick At the launch of a new WiFi project in Alexandra, students like Othabetswe Ranwashe shared how internet access has boosted their learning and skills. Spearheaded by Project Isizwe and Friends of Alexandra, the initiative provides uncapped WiFi to schools, enabling educators to enhance teaching and support students in historically underserved areas.
  • Rights groups criticise new Bela law’s ‘silence’ on plight of learners with disabilities Source: Mail and Guardian Disabled groups have criticised the recently signed Basic Education Law Amendment (Bela) Act for what they called its silence in addressing the problems that students with learning disabilities grapple with. The new law does not “prohibit the exclusion of learners with disabilities from admission to public schools”, the director of Western Cape Forum For Intellectual Disabilities, Gail Davids, told the Mail & Guardian.
  • Research set to change South Africa’s developing IT landscape Source: JET Education Services JET Education Services continues to drive innovation in education. For example, JET contributed to groundbreaking research aimed at strengthening digital and IT education within the Post-School Education and Training (PSET) system. The research, which informed the roadmap developed by the International Youth Foundation (IYF), was handed over to the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) in February 2023.

Language, Literacies, Research Writing and Publishing

  • South African Children Face School Readiness Challenges, New Global Survey Reveals Source: IAfrica A major global survey of primary school teachers has revealed that a significant proportion of South African children are starting school without being developmentally ready, placing them at a disadvantage compared to their international peers.
    The survey, conducted by global children’s charity Theirworld in collaboration with insight agency Hall & Partners, polled nearly 2,600 teachers and school professionals across South Africa, the UK, the US, Brazil, India, and the Netherlands.
  • What’s South Africa’s new school language law and why is it controversial? Source: Aljazeera A new education law in South Africa is dividing lawmakers and sparking angry emotions in a country with a complex racial and linguistic history. Last Friday, President Cyril Ramaphosa signed the Basic Education Laws Amendment (BELA) bill into law but suspended the implementation of two hotly contested sections for at least three months for further consultations among opposing government factions.
  • In honour of South Africa’s cultural and linguistic richness this Heritage Month Source: Mail and Guardian One of the cornerstones of our cultural heritage is the recognition and promotion of South African official languages.
  • Funda Mzansi Championship Selection (Book Clubs) Source: SAGoodNews Bookworm readers across Gauteng Province gathered under one rooftop to compete for the best selection for upcoming book clubs. Gauteng Department of Sport, Art, Culture and Recreation, recently organized a Funda Mzansi Championships for book clubs within the Province. The event was hosted at Kagiso2, Gauteng Archives, on 04 Wednesday September 2024. Different Stakeholders involved were the National Library of South Africa, Provincial Library and Information Services, Community Libraries, District/ Local Municipalities, and NPOs.
  • The new ‘et al’: High risks for university research Source: University World News In academia, the matter of authorship is a serious business. Careers can be built or destroyed through questions that lead back to the author. These would include capability, productivity, sustainability and reputation. This paper reflects on the risks posed by a new cohort of academic authors which is regularly short-changing the system. Typically, the career progression of an academic researcher undergoes various stages, each with distinct priorities.
  • Nadia Davids nabs the 2024 Caine Prize for African Writing Source: IOL The Caine Prize for African Writing has announced that South African writer Nadia Davids has won the 2024 Caine Prize for African Writing for her remarkable short tale Bridling, which was published in The Georgia Review in 2023. This year’s competition saw a record-breaking amount of submissions from 28 African countries contending for the prestigious prize, as well as a significant milestone in the Caine Prize’s history as it celebrates its 25th year.

Open Access, Open Education and Open Educational Resources

  • Celebrating Excellence in Open Education – the 2024 OEAward Winners Source: OEGlobal On September 18, 2024, in an exciting live show featuring previous OEAward recipients, Open Education Global (OEGlobal) announced the award winners of the 2024 Open Education Awards for Excellence (OEAwards 2024). The OEAwards recognize outstanding contributions to open education across 16 categories across four core segments. The annual global celebration recognizes outstanding contributions in the Open Education community, exemplary leaders, distinctive Open Educational Resources, Open Practices worldwide, and inspiring innovations.This year, the OEAwards process received and reviewed nominations for more than 120 people and projects from 29 countries. More notably, the Leadership Award goes to Laura Czerniewicz at the University of Cape Town, South Africa.
  • Open Educational Resources Working Group Source: University of Sheffield Open Educational Resources (OER) are learning, teaching and research materials in any format and medium that reside in the public domain or are under copyright that have been released under an open licence, that permit no-cost access, re-use, re-purpose, adaptation and redistribution by others (UNESCO Recommendation on OER, 2019). The University supports and encourages the re-use, re-purposing and adaptation of existing OER for teaching and learning, and also supports and encourages those who wish to create and share their own OER.
  • Updated OER Publishing Toolkits Source: Open Education Network At the Open Education Network (OEN) community’s September Tea Time, the Publishing Cooperative Advisory Group announced it has completed revisions to the OER Publishing Toolkit. Since forming in 2023, the Advisory Group has been working to update and expand the existing toolkit into two new openly licensed toolkits, which are now available for those interested in publishing open educational resources (OER). Nearly all of the resources have been created, shared and adapted by Open Education Network members over the course of many years.
  • OER is Full of Errors: I’m Okay With It Source: Faculty Focus "Back in 2018, I decided to take the plunge and move to an OER textbook. Now, for those who aren’t familiar, OER, or Open Educational Resources, are course materials under an open license which allows others to access and reuse them at no cost. There’s been a movement lately in institutions, particularly community colleges, to incorporate more OER materials as a way to curb the rising costs of higher education" Read more from Teresa Thompson, a tenured accounting professor at West Valley College in Saratoga, California.

Post Schooling

  • The South Africa-Canada Universities Network (SACUN) formalises a long-standing relationship Source: USAF The inaugural webinar or South Africa-Canada Universities Network (SACUN) on Thursday, 5 September, was launching a relationship that started in April 2023 with a visit to Canada, of a South African delegation comprising vice-chancellors, representatives of science councils and funding agencies including the National Research Foundation — Dr Phethiwe Matutu, Chief Executive Officer of Universities South Africa (USAf), explained, as she welcomed the webinar attendees.
  • Peer review survey shows regional, career-stage disparities Source: University World News In a sign that efforts to include more science researchers from low-income and middle-income countries in the peer review process may be bearing fruit, a recent survey has found that low-income country researchers were much more likely to report an increase in the number of requests they receive to review a paper than their counterparts in high-income countries.
  • What do students expect from the UN’s Pact for the Future? Source: University World News From universal access to quality higher education to the protection of students’ personal and academic information, African students have a range of varied expectations about the outcomes of the United Nations Summit of the Future to be held in New York from 22-23 September. The summit has promised to produce a negotiated, action-oriented Pact for the Future, with chapters touching on sustainable development and financing for development; science, technology and innovation and digital cooperation; and youth and future generations, among others.
  • University receives ultimatum to suspend vice-chancellor Source: University World News The University of South Africa (UNISA) was given until 18 September to suspend its vice-chancellor, Puleng LenkaBula, writes Abram Mashego for City Press. A letter sent to South Africa’s Higher Education and Training Minister Nobuhle Nkabane and the members of the UNISA council on 9 September cites several allegations of misappropriation of funds, dishonesty, corruption, fraud and undermining the rule of law at UNISA.
  • A NEW CHAPTER BEGINS – TUT breaks ground on SA’s first dedicated Motion Picture Production Studios Source: TUT 19 September, marked a significant milestone in the history of the Faculty of Arts and Design at the Tshwane University of Technology (TUT). The first sod was turned on the Arts Campus for the construction of the Motion Picture Production Studios, which will serve as the permanent home for the Faculty’s Motion Picture Production programme.

Skills and Employment

  • Harambee Marks Milestone of Supporting 4 Million Young South Africans on SA Youth Platform Source: Harambee Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator has reached a significant milestone in its mission to address youth unemployment in South Africa. Through the SA Youth Platform, sayouth.mobi, Harambee has now supported over 4 million young people in accessing jobs, self-employment opportunities, skills development programmes, work seeker support, and other vital resources that aid their transition into the labour market. These efforts have helped young South Africans to generate almost R25 billion in income.
  • Holistic approach needed to solve youth joblessness Source: SowetanLive The recent march by unemployed Soweto youth to the offices of Johannesburg mayor Dada Morero to demand jobs in the metro should be viewed with worrying lenses. The march by hundreds of unemployed and frustrated youth might not be the trigger of a “Soweto spring uprising” like the Arab Spring of a decade ago, but it is a clear sign that the youth unemployment rate, coupled with an elevated poverty level, is a ticking time bomb in the country.
  • Momentum Group Foundation calls for increased collaboration to bolster efforts to tackle youth unemployment Source: Creamer Media With South Africa’s youth unemployment having reached unsustainably high levels, Momentum Group Foundation has called for increased collaboration to tackle this and to augment the strides it has made thus far in addressing this issue.
    Speaking during the group’s ‘Masibambisane for Impact on Youth’ event, held in Johannesburg, on September 16, Momentum Corporate CEO Dumo Mbethe explained that the Foundation in 2017 realised that youth unemployment was a key area in which it could make a difference, and subsequently, shifted its corporate social initiatives to cater to this.

Teaching and Learning: Local and Global

  • Journeying Back to Joy in the Classroom Source: Faculty Focus "It started with a yawn. I saw it contagiously meander through the classroom. I was reviewing punctuation rules with my students, and I had to come to the climax of the lecture: semicolons! How was it possible that my students weren’t enjoying this as much as I was? Could it be that they were…bored? Though it pains me to remember it, this was an important moment in my pedagogical journey. Coming to terms with our own myopia as educators can be uncomfortable, but as we are educators first and not just purveyors of content, most of us welcome the chance to become more effective in the classroom. The question that often eludes us is: How?" Continue reading more from Trista Nilsson, senior lecturer in the English and Communication Department at Nazareth University.
  • What You Are Saying Online without Your Words Source: Faculty Focus "It is often said that much, if not most, of communication comes not in what we say but in how we say it. We might say something that sounds angry, but our facial expression demonstrates that we are joking. Conversely, we might say something that sounds very friendly, but our facial expression indicates that the words should be taken as mocking. This is why emoticons exist: to recover the fidelity lost when a face-to-face message is translated into text. In fact, the ability to convey nuance in communication is one of the many advantages of providing voice or screencasting feedback to students—an issue I have covered in past columns." writes John Orlando is an education consultant at Innovations in Practice.
  • Ten African countries prioritising education Source: The Star The Unesco analysis highlights sharp regional disparities in state education spend with Kenya ranked as highest spender per learner on the continent
  • Early childhood education global hub Source: Brookings The Early Childhood Education Global Hub is a public good that provides a one-stop shop for policymakers, funders, civil society, and advocates around the world tracking progress toward the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4.2—equal access to quality pre-primary education.
    Through key data insights, an interactive map, and deep dive country-focused and thematic case studies, the hub can help build a compelling case for urgent policy change and investment in young children’s learning and development. The hub’s content is periodically updated to reflect new information. Explore the map by country or region below. Select a country for additional details.

Technology-Enhanced Learning

  • Global consortium launches AI in education research project Source: University World News A global set of studies into how artificial intelligence (AI) can best be deployed within higher education has been launched by WISE (the Qatar Foundation’s global initiative for education), the United States-based Institute of International Education (IIE) and seven universities worldwide. The goal, according to a joint statement released after a project launch in New York on Tuesday 17 September, is “to explore the role of AI in higher education and skills development for the AI era”.
  • A key shift is taking place: AIs are moving from knowing to doing. What does this mean and why does it matter? Source: LinkedIn Mairéad Pratschke, latest post on the disruption posed by AI in certain industries and how best to prepare for it.
  • AI in education is a public problem Source: Code Acts in Education Ben Williams argues that 'AI in education is a public problem: He challenges the notion of AI as a neutral tool in education, arguing instead that it requires proper deliberation. He presents 21 arguments about AI in education, emphasizing the need for critical examination rather than accepting narratives of technological determinism. For Williams , "AI's not just a neutral tool, and it's not inevitably going to benefit education. AI in education is a public problem. It requires proper deliberation rather than submission to narratives of determinism, inevitabilism and solutionism' This blog post ,written awhile back, was referenced in relation to the authors recent post regarding his concerns about the announcement by the "General Manager of Education" at OpenAI .
  • 7 ways in which AI might already be deepening the educational divide Source: LinkedIn "This post outlines seven ways AI might be exacerbating educational inequalities, from creating a 'pay-to-excel' system to widening the gap between well-funded and under-resourced institutions. It reminds us that while AI promises democratization, we must be cautious about its potential to enhance societal injustices."
  • When public policy ‘fails’ and venture capital ‘saves’ education: Edtech investors as economic and political actors Source: Globalisation, Societies and Education Educational technology (Edtech) investors have become increasingly influential in education; however, they remain under-researched. We address this deficit and introduce the grammar and landscape of Edtech investment into education research. We empirically examine venture capital Edtech investors and argue that they are economic and political actors. Investors construct the Edtech industry through their investment and advancing particular imaginaries. They legitimate their authority in education through narratives of expertise and measures of social impact. They consolidate the Edtech industry by constructing social networks to perform the political work of futuring. The analysis provides original insights into the power of Edtech investors in education and proposes a research agenda examining new relations between the education, technology, and finance industries.