University’s outreach work cracks code for student success

The Tangible Africa team at Nelson Mandela University (NMU) in South Africa is a small group of passionate people working to change the narrative for careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM.

To date, more than 100,000 children on two continents have been exposed to Tangible’s coding outreach, and more than ZAR80 million (US$4.2 million) has been raised for bursaries to enable them to study after school. Tangible is an engagement project of the Leva Foundation, a non-profit organisation, in partnership with NMU, with AWS InCommunities its largest sponsor.

Its founder, Professor Jean Greyling, is an unassuming academic, deliberate in choosing “we” over “I” in interviews, and quick to name colleagues and students, present and past, for their contributions.

The head of the department of computer science at NMU in Gqeberha in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province says it has not been an easy journey.

“The biggest wall to break through is that 16,000 of the country’s 25,000 schools do not have a computer lab,” says Greyling of South Africa’s education system.

“It doesn’t make sense to go into a school and talk about programming if they’ve never touched a computer. You are talking in a vacuum, and it can be a useless exercise.”

Furthermore, he says, “teachers do not always know how to introduce coding to learners”.

Classrooms without computers and teachers who do not know the subject have not daunted the Tangible Team. Instead, it has been an inspiration to innovate.

Greyling and one of his past honours students, Byron Batteson, developed their first ground-breaking coding game, Tanks, in 2017, using puzzle pieces and a mobile application. Then came Boats and Rangers.

Since then, the games have won numerous awards.

Tanks, Boats and Rangers

Simply put, Tanks, Boats and Rangers are a way to introduce learners from under-resourced areas to coding concepts without using a computer – and this is vital in a country like South Africa that faces a desperate shortage of software developers.

“The kids immediately get addicted because of the gamification, but they are actually doing quite complex problem-solving,” says Greyling. “We are introducing coding concepts to a Grade 7 child (the level after seven years of formal schooling in South Africa) in a rural school that I would teach to my first-years at university.”

One of the keys to its success, he says, is that “teachers are the facilitators and the learners drive the process”.

“We have a lot of activities and tools that focus on problem-solving, creativity, strategy and group work, all the 21st-century skills,” says Greyling.

Building skills for the future

Playing the games primes the learners – starting at primary school level – for careers in STEM, in this way cultivating the coding ecosystem of the future.

However, he emphasises, “it is not our responsibility to make them coders or software developers, but rather to make them aware of the careers in coding”.

They are introduced to the problem-solving technique of computational thinking, the logic of decomposition, abstraction, pattern recognition, and algorithms.

“Those are basic components of any problem-solving skill, whether it’s coding or managing your marriage. Once we have identified their skills we also need to help them get a good matric. Then they can apply to do a computing degree at any university in the country.

“At school, we nurture them in various ways towards a degree in our department, and then we see them through to get employment, through a holistic approach of support.”

Greyling also credits one of his past doctoral students, Melisa Koorsse (now Van der Merwe), for laying a foundation for Tangible Africa.

While doing her doctorate in computer science, Koorsse worked on using the Mxit instant messaging application to help teach computer applications technology, or CAT, at South African schools.

“These kids did not have textbooks, they did not have context, so we worked on a Mxit dictionary which the kids could go into at any time and find descriptions for the terms,” says Greyling. “We had 100,000 queries per month. Every hour of the day, 24/7, the dictionary was busy.”

In a similar way, Tangible uses unconventional methods to help teach coding, sparking curiosity for this field.

‘Bursaries change lives’

Seeing how many youngsters could not afford to move on to tertiary education prompted Greyling to start a bursary programme.

Since starting this in 2016, Greyling and his team have raised more than ZAR80 million (about US$4.2 million) towards bursaries, which enables between 80 and 100 students to enrol each year.

“Bursaries change lives,” says Greyling. “The bursaries project dovetails with Tangible and it is very close to my heart. We try to take a holistic approach because most people who get bursaries also come from challenging backgrounds.”

Here, he mentions three women who ensure that students are nurtured while they study: Carol van Onselen, Fezi Fani and Geraldine Fraser.

“They are part of our holistic team to make sure that our bursary holders don’t just get money from us. It includes weekly tutorials, and medical assistance such as glasses, life coaching and counselling.”

It works – and not only for the student beneficiaries.

“Companies like that ... they are not giving a million rands, never knowing who the recipient is.

“No one wants to throw their CSI [corporate social investment] spend into a black hole; they do want it to be personalised. We can link 10 students to that million rands and they can call us any day to find out how it’s going.”

The Institute of Information Technology Professionals South Africa and EngineerIT magazine have also honoured Greyling with their Distinguished Service in ICT Award for his work in promoting programming and IT careers via Tangible Africa.

While the metaphorical carrot at the end of the stick is seeing a student gain employment and flourish, the stick is seeing those who are on campus with nothing to eat. Student hunger is common at universities across South Africa, and there are several initiatives at NMU to combat this reality.

“One student said to me that December and January was never a time of festivities but rather of worry, of: ‘How am I going to fund my studies next year?’.”

The challenge for universities

The good news is that career prospects are good for computer sciences graduates. Although South Africa has unprecedented levels of youth unemployment, this discipline has an employment rate of more than 90%. Salaries also tend to be generous.

Ironically, however, this is a challenge for the higher education sector when it comes to retaining talent, especially young black researchers and academics, says Greyling.

He completed his PhD at NMU and has been an associate professor there since 2004.

“There are exorbitant salaries in the private sector, so you really need to have a calling to remain in academia,” he says.

Today, aged 58, he is happy where he is. In matric, the last year of formal schooling, he had considered becoming a pastor, and that sense of service to society still drives him today.

“I can see lives are being changed so, at this stage of my life, I wouldn’t have chosen anything else.”

However, he does admit to his academic shortcomings: “as an associate professor, I’ve never really excelled in research. Also, I struggle to focus on one thing; I’ve got so many things that interest me.

“Engagement is what drives me. Teaching students and interacting with them has been my passion since I started in 1992. It’s the part of the job that I enjoy most.

“We have a much bigger dream than South Africa, we believe that this is a solution from Africa, for Africa, and our dream is to take coding into the whole of the continent, reaching millions of learners across Africa.”

NMU and Leva Foundation’s Tangible Africa is also well on its way in increasing an active footprint across Europe.

Coding for visually impaired people

The year 2022 saw the launch of Bona Africa, a partnership that brought coding to visually impaired people in a novel way.

In 2023, Tangible shared a #Coding4Mandela event across 70 sites in Africa and Europe, culminating in a virtual coding world championship involving teams from 21 countries.

Sometimes the individual success stories have the most impact.

Buhle Pikoli, 21, is evidence of Tangible Africa’s success. The course of his life changed one afternoon in 2018, when he played Tanks at Cowan High School in New Brighton, which is a few kilometres from the university.

Within three days, he completed all 35 levels of the game, and he went on to study IT at NMU. Today, he is a junior software developer.

“Buhle is the first person we know of who completed the whole journey. He is now in the economy. May there be thousands more,” says Greyling.

• To find out more about Tangible Africa, contact Greyling at Jean.Greyling@mandela.ac.za or Jackson Tshabalala at jackson@levafoundation.org.