Using technology effectively to build a better work and life balance

Faculty of Economic Management Sciences: Dr Fazlyn Petersen - Rising Star

As a senior lecturer at UWC, Dr Fazlyn Petersen knows that women at university are expected to play many roles at the same time – multi-tasking as academics, researchers, mentors, wives and mothers. “As mothers and academics, it seemed only natural that we would take over the role of teacher to our children during the lockdown.” Of course, this was in addition to the students she was in charge of professionally, as well. On top of these challenges was added a loss of childcare and domestic services during the pandemic.

“Simply put, caring about our students’ success meant spending many more hours working than ever before. I teach a large class of more than 300 students. Many students expected their lecturers to be available after hours to assist them with work. I felt like my workload had tripled in 2020. Changing to online learning also blurred the boundaries between work and office time.” Her areas of academic speciality include risk, quality, project and knowledge management; as well as business analysis and testing. She is a certified project manager and tester, and has invaluable experience in several industries such as financial services, retail and auditing. With all of that on her plate, time management became crucial to navigating the pandemic.

She was able to come up with many successful ways of creating more time and managing the increased workload. “In order to create more structured working hours and time, I tried scheduling hours to check emails and deal with student queries. I created lessons on our electronic learning management system with expectations and sent out reminders for students at the start of every week. I made work available to students before the expected date, so that they had more time to prepare. lessons contained videos to explain work and this assisted a little with the number of queries. I also learnt to delegate certain administrative tasks to colleagues and our teaching assistant.”

Her long-term professional goal is to become an Associate Professor, and she is currently working on creating more inclusive online environments in education and health by using data-free options. “Many people are currently excluded, due to the digital divide and significant inequalities in South Africa,” she explains. “I’m hoping that my work will change this by moving from the exclusionary fourth industrial revolution (4IR) towards the fifth industrial revolution (5IR) that will focus on user needs, innovation purpose and inclusivity.”