ES Centre for e- l earning CENT

Mr Izak Smit smiti@cput.ac.za

The primary aim of the Centre for e-Learning is to give support to the academic project on the pedagogically best use of an institutional electronic Learner Management System (LMS). How then should we address emerging technologies?

The Centre for e-Learning has an open agenda when we evaluate technologies. It is difficult to implement a large number of different environments unless there is a critical mass of users requiring it. Higher education should be open to alternative environments, whilst balancing the value it brings to teaching and learning measured against the financial impact on the operational budget of the institution.

The development rate of new applications can best be described as a fanatic race between contenders who aim to be the next technology-enabling entrepreneur to make the news in billion dollar acquisitions. Research in new educational technologies should then be measured against proven track records and the development capacity of these technologies.

Cloud computing tries to win over clients by means

Research Output

Conference papers

Smit I

Student retention and throughput at CPUT, Blackboard Executive Seminar, Stellenbosch, 17-18 March 2014 of offering something for free. Unfortunately, all technologies have a fee structure somewhere, whether it is in the licensing of the application or the underlying support services provided. Where research is done as part of individual qualification improvements, it tends to focus on the application in a small target group without taking into consideration the possible upscaling for institutional adoption.

One aspect where research has led to wider institutional adoption is in the area of early identification of students at risk. Academic enhancement surveys and academic progress marks are taken into consideration, and students can be identified, notified easily and monitored. A full tracking of the process is available to measure the effectiveness of interventions when we identified specific risk elements. The use of the Retention Centre also forms an important part of the new thrust by the Fundani CHED’s First Year Experience drive to assist first-year students who may experience problems adapting to higher education or progressing as required.

On a national level, the Centre for e-Learning plays an active role within the South African Technology

Network (SATN) in the identification of technologies used by all member institutions and the development of benchmarks for effective utilisation of technologies for teaching and learning and to develop adoption strategies in line with international best practice on the early identification of students at risk. A workshop was held to start the process of adding academic performance indicators to the existing annual SATN performance indicators report. The first indicators added were throughput and success rates. Following this, we aim to look into indicators that point to the effect educational technology may have on student throughput and success.

Smit I

Student retention and throughput models, BBWorld 2014 Conference, Las Vegas, NV, 14-16 July 2014

Smit I

Mobile technologies: Higher education expectations, Transforming the Delivery of Education through Information and Communication Technologies, Cape Town, 20-21 August 2014