South African Journal of Higher Education最新文献

{"title":"Information Technology as a catalyst for the professionalisation of academic administrators: A case study of a health sciences faculty","authors":"M. Simpson, C. Shaw","doi":"10.20853/37-4-5205","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.20853/37-4-5205","url":null,"abstract":"As academic administrators become a key staffing component of efficiently run universities, their role as knowledge workers is being reframed. This is especially evident as universities increasingly rely on information technologies and student information systems to process vast amounts of student data in the pursuit of improving student success and assisting senior management with future planning. In this study, a qualitative research approach was employed to explore the enabling factors that contributed to academic administrators becoming central to various data quality management processes. Twenty-six (26) participants were purposively selected to participate in this study. Data collection strategies included the use of semi-structured interviews, focus groups, observations and documentary sources. The findings demonstrate the interrelationship between the professionalisation of academic administrators and enhanced data quality management processes. The results reassert the argument for reconceptualising the role of academic administrators as knowledge workers. This position has implications for how such staff are perceived within the organisational structure of the university and the types of staff development and training required.","PeriodicalId":44786,"journal":{"name":"South African Journal of Higher Education","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135496099","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Maintaining the integrity of the South African university: The impact of ChatGPT on plagiarism and scholarly writing","authors":"M Singh","doi":"10.20853/37-5-5941","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.20853/37-5-5941","url":null,"abstract":"Recent advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) have reignited discussions about the value of the university and its role in producing and facilitating knowledge. The invention of ChatGPT has led to differing responses in the academy, with some welcoming its abilities and others fearing that it may undermine what schools and universities do, calling it “apocalyptic” (Green 2022). These aspects impact the integrity of the academy and are therefore a fundamental contribution to the debate. The impact, as well as the perceived impact, of AI on teaching and learning in higher education has been consistently documented in popular media. Therefore, the aim of this article is to understand the impact of ChatGPT on plagiarism and scholarly writing. It contributes to the under-researched academic discourse of generative artificial intelligence and teaching and learning by garnering the views of three established professors in South Africa. The findings from this qualitative endeavour demonstrate that, for these professors, these kinds of technology are welcome, and students need to be taught how to engage with them rather than vilifying them. Much of the responsibility rests on the lecturers and the university to create a teaching and learning environment that allows for these technologies to enter the classroom, especially in the way we assess.","PeriodicalId":44786,"journal":{"name":"South African Journal of Higher Education","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135704824","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Curriculum analytics of an Open Distance Learning (ODL) Programme: A data-driven perspective","authors":"E. Mashile, A. Fynn, M. Matoane","doi":"10.20853/37-3-4835","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.20853/37-3-4835","url":null,"abstract":"Student support, which is an integral part of a learning programme, is most effective when it is integrated into the design of the curricula, rather than when it forms stand-alone interventions. Identifying those areas that require attention from a student support perspective is often based on the perspectives of the institution and teaching staff involved, rather than on how Students concerned interact with the programme. In this article, we draw on the research fields of curriculum analytics to identify areas of curriculum improvement for an ODL programme using student data. The results of the study indicate the important role that is played by curriculum analytics in designing student support interventions, and in restructuring elements of the curriculum structure to support student success. Such is done by ascertaining what constitutes the learned curriculum versus the planned curriculum, the Temporal Distance between Courses, and any bottlenecks within the programme that might hamper progression. The results, further, underscore the need for an effective execution strategy to be aligned with the principles that guided the development of the curriculum concerned.","PeriodicalId":44786,"journal":{"name":"South African Journal of Higher Education","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67716039","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Establishing a baseline: A social realist perspective on academic advising at a South African university prior to COVID-19","authors":"D. D. Klerk, De Klerk","doi":"10.20853/37-4-5342","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.20853/37-4-5342","url":null,"abstract":"Academic advising remains an emerging practice and profession within the South African higher education sector. Although there has been an increase in literature about advising in South Africa recently, there remains a dearth of literature about the experiences of academic advisors working in this context. This article aims to make such a contribution, by focusing in particular on the experiences and insights from 15 South African advisors (from one university) about academic advising prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. The data that informs this study was collected through semi-structured interviews. The focus in this article is on advisor responses to three of the interview questions, which proved sufficient because of the richness of the data. The study draws on elements of social realist Margaret Archer’s (1995) morphogenetic framework to explicate why this perspective on advising within a South African higher education context is necessary. Archer’s (1995, 2005) work on structure, culture, and agency is then used as analytic lenses with which to analyse the advisors’ experiences and insights of advising prior to the pandemic. A phenomenographic approach (Marton 1981; Tight 2016) is adopted to explore the varying conceptions (Cibangu and Hepworth 2016) of advising offered by the academic advisors. Nine focal areas emerge from these insights, which are analysed and discussed using Archer’s (1995, 2005) structure, culture, and agency. It becomes apparent that academic advising was complex even before the pandemic. The advisors express an urgency to help others, raise concerns about entrenched inequities and resource constraints, highlight the pitfalls of inadequate help-seeking among students, and emphasise the need for better institutional integration of academic advising at the advisors’ university, among other things. It becomes clear that there are numerous structural and cultural tensions that constrain advisor and student agency, possibly to the detriment of student success. The article leaves the reader with insights into the experiences of academic advisors prior to the pandemic, thus providing a baseline against which to measure advising during and beyond the pandemic, at a time when advising in South African higher education is still being developed and defined.","PeriodicalId":44786,"journal":{"name":"South African Journal of Higher Education","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67716505","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Crises, changed leadership, change management and educational technology","authors":"F. Waghid","doi":"10.20853/37-4-6011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.20853/37-4-6011","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44786,"journal":{"name":"South African Journal of Higher Education","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67716549","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Ethological propositions for curriculum studies in higher education","authors":"V Bozalek","doi":"10.20853/37-5-5958","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.20853/37-5-5958","url":null,"abstract":"The conceit that humans are exceptional and a species apart from nature continues to dominate traditional forms of curriculum in higher education.           This article considers how an ethological curriculum might be used to disrupt current imaginaries informing prevailing higher education curricula practices in its rejection of a metaphysics of individualism that is foundational to traditional curriculum studies. An ethological curriculum thinks with more-than-human forms of life in relational ways to consider how we might work differently in higher education. The article offers four propositions as launching points, inflections or forces which can potentiate an ethological curriculum ‒ cultivating attunement, attentiveness and noticing; becoming-with; rendering each other capable; and engaging response-ably.","PeriodicalId":44786,"journal":{"name":"South African Journal of Higher Education","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135561005","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A “rejoinder” to a response-able reviewing of A posthumanist re-reading of teacher agency in times of curriculum reform","authors":"W Appadoo-Ramsamy","doi":"10.20853/37-5-6140","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.20853/37-5-6140","url":null,"abstract":"How would we define a rejoinder (article)? The usual expectations are responses (termed as often “angry” by the Cambridge Dictionary) that would react critically to questions pertaining to a scholar’s expertise or involving a defensive reaction. But for the purpose of this intra-active dialogical becoming, I will focus my attention on the rich dialogical writing and reviewing approach that brought me to this rejoinder article, fully acknowledging the fluidity and complexity of academic landscapes that are always in becoming. I appreciate the reviewer(s) and editor(s) proposal of this affirmative response-able writing and reviewing process that presents an acknowledgment that a theory/problematic in becoming (such as posthumanism in education) comprises an experimentation. Instead of adopting attack-and-defend binary reactions (where reviewers attack and writers defend or vice versa), what we should be questioning is what can we learn from a critical response-able reading of such experimentations. The initial article, the response article, and this “rejoinder” are in fact engaging with a question posed by Bozalek, Zembylas, and Shefer (2019, 351) – “How ... can peer reviewing be shaped to encourage the academic writer and support scholarly development of their arguments?” Let us firstly acknowledge that Posthumanism can be defined in various ways and is not limited to a fixed interpretation and is currently in flux, as scholars move from humanist foci to a posthumanist epistemological and ontological turn. In such a climate of change, this exercise of response-able writing and reviewing has allowed the voices of both the writer (who traditionally responds/adheres to the authority of reviewers and editors) and reviewers (whose rich and critical engagements are most of the time anonymised) to intra-act","PeriodicalId":44786,"journal":{"name":"South African Journal of Higher Education","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135659074","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Desktop Analysis and Qualitative Investigation of Programmes and Initiatives for the Prevention of and Response to Gender Based Violence at South African Universities with Medical Campuses","authors":"M Hewett, L Butler-Kruger, K Foflonker, J Edge, M.H. Botha, S Seedat","doi":"10.20853/37-5-5181","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.20853/37-5-5181","url":null,"abstract":"Gender-based violence (GBV) is pervasive at South African higher education institutions (HEIs). Based on a media statement (dated 6 October 2016) by the Department of Higher Education and Training, GBV programmes at HEIs need to be evidence-informed, responsive, contextually relevant, inclusive and person-centred. The present article aims to explore the nature of GBV programmes currently implemented at HEIs in South Africa. A rapid review of the literature, supported by qualitative interviews with representatives of South African HEIs with medical campuses, was conducted. Findings indicate that there is an urgent need to clearly define GBV and to mention it explicitly in policy documents. In addition, research evidence on the effectiveness of prevention and response interventions at HEIs in South Africa is lacking. Challenges highlighted by the HEIs that were surveyed include the lack of trust by staff and students in the response and action plans of the response/task teams at HEIs, uncertainty with regards to the roles of relevant stakeholders and sectors when reporting incidents, as well as insufficient information about what GBV is. This study is intended to provide a baseline for further research evaluating current GBV programmes on medical campuses at HEIs, and highlights the need for an evidence-informed framework of the key ingredients for effective GBV response and prevention programmes.","PeriodicalId":44786,"journal":{"name":"South African Journal of Higher Education","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135666922","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Light at the end of a tunnel: An appraisal of online teaching and learning in and post COVID-19 era","authors":"R Moyo","doi":"10.20853/37-5-5157","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.20853/37-5-5157","url":null,"abstract":"The COVID-19 pandemic was like a magic bullet in pronouncing the fourth education revolution, a period of swift migration to online teaching and learning (T&L) platforms. This became evident at the dawn of lockdown periods from March 2020, when countries all over the globe shut down businesses to contain the virus. The shutdown impacted economies negatively. Thus, the educational sector, particularly higher education, was hard hit as the shift from physical to online distance T&L exposed the wide digital divide in both developed and developing worlds. The challenges have been widely recorded, and although these seem to be clouding the opportunities that are yet to be synthesised, it is worthy of corroborating the noted opportunities to prepare for T&L trajectories. Thus, the current study is an appraisal of online teaching and learning, by critically reviewing related literature from various sources dating to the dawn of migration to distance and online T&L platforms across the globe in 2020. The objective is to identify some themes for opportunities for curriculum development brought about by the unprecedented migration to online T&L, to more effectively model current and future scenarios. The major findings, which are explanatory, indicate that online T&L increases access to education by trumping physical and geographical boundaries. Multimedia T&L formats can cater for various capabilities and learning styles. Online T&L has further prompted some education institutions to invest more in information and communication technologies (ICT) thus aligning with the fourth industrial revolution and in some cases the fifth industrial revolution. The COVID-19 era has created opportunities for the adoption of online T&L technologies among both educators and learners to align themselves accordingly. This historical epoch has significantly prompted more commitment to collaboration, partnerships, and associations in the whole education sector to solicit more resources. It is rational to conclude that the fourth industrial revolution (4IR) is manifesting itself across the globe, with some developed parts already in the fifth industrial revolution, despite the challenges and albeit at different levels. A conceptual model of a general fourth education revolution, that education institutions, particularly in the developing world, can adapt and adjust to suit their specific circumstances, has thus been developed. The model aims to improve preparation for online education instruction, which has striven, and an unknown future.","PeriodicalId":44786,"journal":{"name":"South African Journal of Higher Education","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135666938","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The correlation between materialism, social comparison and status consumption among students","authors":"T. Pelser, J. van Schalkwyk","doi":"10.20853/37-2-5025","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.20853/37-2-5025","url":null,"abstract":"South African students face many challenges when completing their tertiary education, finances being one of the most significant. This is not only due to a lack of monetary resources but also to students’ inability to manage their available resources. Students often make financial decisions not in their own interest due to both internal and external factors. Consequently, many students do not finish their studies or end up in debt. The research reported on in this article examined the correlation between three factors which influence spending and debt according to previous research, namely Materialism, Social Comparison and Status Consumption. These concepts refer to how much people value material possessions and how they compare their possessions to those of others and spend on status-conferring possessions to improve their image. This study used convenience sampling of 630 Generation Y students registered from four university campuses. Data collection was conducted using a self-reporting questionnaire. Data analysis comprised 597 valid questionnaires. The results reveal that Status Consumption can be predicted using Materialism and Social Comparison tendencies. The net result of this situation is that students first compare themselves to their peers and then spend money to feel better about themselves or present an improved image to their peers instead of investing their limited resources in their education. Very often, this spending is funded using credit. According to existing literature, this is true for students and the population at large and is one of the main drivers of the current debt problems South Africa is experiencing.","PeriodicalId":44786,"journal":{"name":"South African Journal of Higher Education","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67715566","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}