Technology universities’ project focuses on teaching modalities

Can the Higher Education Reform Experts South Africa (HERESA) project be used as a tool to re-conceive South Africa’s higher education sector in the Fourth Industrial Revolution and post-pandemic world?

This was a key talking point among panellists during a virtual launch of the HERESA project, an initiative of the Technological Higher Education Network South Africa (THENSA), in collaboration with the Erasmus+ Capacity Building Project for Higher Education and modelled on Higher Education Reform Experts in the European Union neighbourhood.

The discussion unfolded between coordinators of the project and an international representative from Finland, who focused on how the advent of the coronavirus has compelled universities in South Africa to rethink their teaching and learning pedagogies and their contribution to the broader battle against the virus.

However, the biggest threat appears to have been adjusting to online learning.

“Our institutions are at different stages with the progression of online learning and many of our institutions are having difficulties in accessing online platforms,” said Dr Vathiswa Papu-Zamxaka, the Tshwane University of Technology’s deputy vice-chancellor for research, innovation and engagement.

Papu-Zamxaka was of the view that the establishment of the education reform experts in South Africa unlocks an opportunity to create a generic online platform accessible to all universities in the country, which will reduce the strain on universities to design or upscale their current online platforms.

She envisions the project occupying a coordinating role among all universities of technology in South Africa.

Better learning outcomes

The pilot project was publicly launched on 16 March and its duty will be to build a network of experts dedicated to positively influence the higher education sector to achieve better institutional and learning outcomes.

Chairing the panel discussion, Dr Sershen Naidoo, the HERESA coordinator and executive director of the Institute of Natural Resources, said researchers and educationists have taken for granted that some institutions are dealing with developmental challenges that existed before the pandemic.

“This new challenge of entering the realm of online was thrust upon them. It’s something we should visit as an immediate priority as HERESA, and it’s emerging more and more as we discuss with colleagues in the lead-up to the operationalisation of this project,” he said.

Speaking in the context of the university community she is part of, Professor Judy Peter, who is the Cape Peninsula University of Technology’s director for strategic initiatives and partnerships, said reimagining technology-focused universities extends to an increase in collaborative opportunities in research, including staff and student exchange programmes.

Peter emphasised that both local and international partnerships can level up the quality of education and, in the same breath, open doors for collaborations that prioritise work-integrated learning among other benefits, such as infrastructure.

“It must be pointed out that [partnerships] go beyond infrastructure in as much as they create a mindset of expanded solution-orientated learning. Accordingly, they prepare students for collaborative learning and project-based learning,” Peters said.

Coordinators of HERESA will focus their efforts on competency-based learning, work-integrated learning, curricula for the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), and leadership as challenges that the higher education sector in South Africa are facing.

Higher education post the pandemic

Peter further elaborated that, to understand the 4IR world post-pandemic, the sector needs to be perceptive to the fact that 4IR learning in its multiple modality and rollout is embedded in the politics of the haves and the have-nots.

Therefore, cultural and economic inequalities should ideally underpin 4IR interventions and hybrid plans of face-to-face virtual teaching and learning in a post-pandemic world.

While the pandemic still engulfs society, discussions about how pedagogy will affect education post the pandemic need to happen now.

“The pedagogical emphasis on post-pandemic education is very critical and that is something we still haven’t figured out how much it is going to change our way of implementing education,” argued Kirsi Viskari from the Tampere University of Applied Sciences in Finland.

In Finland, according to Viskari, the focus of the higher education system has been on the education, research and development activities to answer the competence needs that the work-life challenges even before the pandemic.

But the applied sciences university and sector at large in the country is concerned with the mental health of students: “It seems that, when students are in the early phases of their adult age, they don’t commit to university societies and communities when they can’t meet in person and this creates loneliness and mental health issues.”

Even in the post-pandemic world, we still have other common challenges like climate change and the sustainable development goals that we need to tackle and 4IR is a tool to utilise in the future to solve these issues, she added.

Universities that will benefit from the project include the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, the Central University of Technology, the Durban University of Technology, Tshwane University of Technology, the University of Venda and the Walter Sisulu University – all members of THENSA.

This article is part of a THENSA and University World News media partnership.