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Teaching and Learning Review 2020
Collaborate is a synchronous video conferencing tool that allows lecturers to add files, share applications, and use a virtual whiteboard to interact with students in real time. Students do not have to install any software to join a session and can access it from their mobile devices on a browser or through the app. Collaborate sessions are recorded for asynchronous reviewing (surveys show that students value this property highly) or initial viewing if the student cannot make the contact time. Analytics for Learn and Predict provide learning analytics capabilities. Lecturers and other relevant staff are able to track student activity and identify potential problems early enough to plan a successful intervention. Analytics data—factual information, often figures and statistics—constitute part of an evidence-based approach to decision-making. During the lockdown, various clickUP affordances were used to create a sense of community and care for students who were feeling isolated. The students valued caring and encouraging messages from their lecturers, in addition to the communication of administrative or learning-related matters. Lecturers used the clickUP Announcements tool for one-tomany, one-way communication to the whole class. Using the Discussion tool in clickUP creates a sense of immediacy, as does the use of Collaborate. The University encouraged all lecturers to use the Retention Centre in clickUP to check which students had not logged in on the system during the preceding five days so that they could contact these students. Data gathered over the years indicated a significant growth in the number of active undergraduate modules in clickUP, 95,5% in 2019. This growth may be linked to a number of factors, one of which is the availability and attendance of the professional development courses. Another is #FeesMustFall in 2016, which gave a significant boost to uptake of the LMS in 2017. Reflective research was conducted into the impact of this movement on the uptake of blended or hybrid learning, with funding from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. One outcome of the research was a significant improvement in online self-help resources being made available to academic staff.
Other technologies were also used, including the following: • The H5P software allowed lecturers to embed interactive quizzes into videos and track student results in the clickUP Grade Centre. • The Clicker mobile app (TurningPoint Mobile Clicker Solution), which allows students to respond to multiple-choice questions in class, with test scores automatically captured in the clickUP Grade Centre, could fortunately also be used in any Collaborate session. • WhatsApp was already used by student groups for academic work, mentoring, tutoring and communicating and even, to some extent, by lecturers and support services, but its use became more intense and widespread after the lockdown. Collaborate also proved useful for meetings such as the Senate Committee for Teaching and Learning, the FLY@UP student success committee and the Tshebi data analytics committee. Other videoconferencing platforms were also deployed.
People The University has qualified and experienced instructional designers in the Department for Education Innovation (EI) who continued to support lecturers and tutors to maintain high levels of teaching and assessing with technology. The fact that nearly 100% of modules had an online presence at the start of 2020 implies that most of the lecturers had undergone training and knew how to use many of the Blackboard tools. Lecturers also had access to online selfhelp resources as well as assistance from the instructional designers. All students had some experience of working on the learning management system, with senior students being particularly adept.
LECTURER REFLECTION: Faculty of Humanities—An opportunity to grow together ‘The sudden turn to remote online learning was, despite the challenges, liberating and an opportunity for personal growth. The changed pedagogy compelled me to fully embrace the many surprising functionalities of clickUP. Discussions about the remote online teaching and learning project with colleagues within one’s own academic department and across other academic departments in the faculty as well as at other tertiary institutions (both national and international), who were plunged into the same circumstances I was, were invigorating. I have rarely in my career had the opportunity to engage so meaningfully with colleagues about teaching and learning. These engagements also made me mindful and appreciative of the resources and leadership at UP. It came as a surprise to me that colleagues at highly ranked international tertiary institutions were also struggling to adjust and negotiate through the challenges the 2020 academic year presented. The manner in which teaching staff were supported by Education Innovation specialists and library staff at unmentionable hours of the day deserves special accolades. They were available, patient and responsive to clumsy questions and requests for support in the early hours of the mornings. Their calm demeanour to what I regularly perceived to be a crisis, was reassuring. Although each day presented new challenges, no problem could not be solved if students reached out for help. It goes without saying that I cannot imagine an “unblended” teaching and learning environment in the future when face-toface classes do resume.’
