RCCP II eConversation Series 5: Using blended learning tools and videos in university teaching

ABOUT

During this 90 minute online RCCPII eConversation session Elne van Niekerk and Justin Pringle will share knowledge and experience with video recording tools and applications in higher education. The session will include two short presentations followed by time for discussion and questions.

Elne will talk about how the One Button Studio was adopted as a video recording setup at North West University in 2016, first in South Africa. The creation of video material is invaluable for the lecturer who plans on using a flipped class approach. The studio is an excellent example of how the Centre for Teaching and Learning enables students and academics to record videos that suit their needs. Educating lecturers to use this new tool effectively for instruction and for assessment as well as informing students about new assessment processes turned out to be a challenge. Video as an assessment tool was something that has not been used a lot and training sessions on the incorporation of video into learning design had to be conducted.

Justin will talk about: The world is changing, shouldn’t education? Current research has shown that the “lecture” is dead. Do students learn when they attend lectures - If you can get good attendance? What happens to those who don’t attend? Are we as educators promoting “deep learning”? These are questions that many educators wrestle on a daily basis when planning courses. MIT put their minds to these types of questions and developed the edX MOOC platform. In this talk I will outline how the use of online tools such as edX can begin to redefine education. I will discuss my experiences in the application of edX at the University of KwaZulu Natal - How students have received it, how I deployed it, what I would change and the support I need to run the system.

The session forms part of the Rural Campuses Connection Project II (RCCPII) Capacity Development Initiative. The RCCP II eConversation Series offers online sessions covering topics relevant to researchers, support staff, and students at higher education institutions in South Africa. For more information about future sessions and other events please visit the RCCPII calendar.

About the speakers:

Elne van Niekerk has a qualification in Corporate Communication and has been working at the NWU as a Technology Advisor & eLearning Developer in the Centre for Teaching & Learning (previously Academic Development and Support) on the Vanderbijlpark campus since 2011. She currently works as Education Technologist with an interest in investigating technologies that address Teaching and Learning needs of staff and students.

Justin Pringle is a fluid dynamicist at the University of KwaZulu-Natal currently exploring turbulent microstructure in the ocean, wave pumping in flexible tubes and nearshore coastal hydrodynamics. He is passionate about environmental fluid dynamics and is currently building a research group to address complex environmental flow regimes, water quality and fundamental concepts in fluid dynamics.