Sense-making stories from ERT, in the Humanities at Wits

Renee Koch & Laura Dison

The closure of face-to-face classes at Wits, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, has changed teaching and learning in ways that are both apparent and also less visible or obvious. While examination results offer one view of learning in this time, and other studies have uncovered some of the challenges remote learning poses for students, this knowledge does not necessarily inform teaching practices. This study aims to make sense of the relational nature of the teaching and learning context within the Humanities at Wits, by reflecting on the use of the SenseMaker app. It therefore seeks to identify connections between structures, resources and practices in a complex system that support meaningful learning, and so identify potential avenues for action.

Personal narratives reveal the specificity of lived experience as well as the structure of socio-cultural systems within which their narrators are embedded. Stories describe the context, actors and events of experience as well as the relationships between these story elements. Therefore, narrative is able to reveal significant structural dynamics of the system narrators are embedded in. Consequently, the Teaching and Learning Unit in the Humanities at Wits collected self-signified stories from students and staff, through the SenseMaker app.

Since learning is the result of a complex process, supported by various components of teaching and learning in relation to one another, it is not always easy to compensate for the loss of one component with another. For this reason, it helps to identify the components of a learning and teaching system and also to understand the ways these components are related. This knowledge will help the Faculty of Humanities respond to the present context, firstly, by offering appropriate support for the challenges experienced and secondly, by pointing to emergent practices that suggest new ways of supporting significant learning in this time and place.

Type of Contribution

Presentation