Page 12 - Transformation Report 2021

2.3 Digitalisation of Learning and Teaching - Learning become the “hub” for launching specialised local, national
Management System and international rescue activities. The virtual launch took
The appointment of e-technologists and learning place on 17 November 2021, and Rescue SA relocated
experience designers in the LT Collab enabled the LT about 60 tons of equipment, including vehicles and boats
Collab to offer employees technological and learning valued at more than R30-million, to Mandela University
design support. Demonstrations and workshops on apps and the Eastern Cape. This partnership will greatly benefit
and available software have optimised online learning. The our Health Sciences students and the communities that
Learning Design team is leading a process to standardise the University serves across the Metro and further afield.
the structure of online course content and learner
experiences across programmes. All online resources The Faculty of Engineering, Built Environment and
are being redesigned to reflect our “Africa-purposed” Technology hosted accreditation visits from the
learning and teaching vision. Engineering Council of South Africa (ECSA) in the fourth
quarter of 2021, covering Civil, Electrical, Industrial, Marine
The online Learning and Teaching components for fully and Mechanical Engineering and Mechatronics. ECSA will
online or hybrid programmes include digital materials, communicate the official outcomes of these accreditation
resources, and activities on the Moodle Learning visits in due course, but initial feedback indicated that
Management System (LMS), as well as lectures and flipped accreditation would be retained.
class sessions via Microsoft (MS) Teams. Tutorials and
supplemental instruction (SI) lessons are also conducted 3. Strategic Development Trajectories
online. The flipped classroom approach will be retained for
the future, as will online tutorials. The need to coordinate The University has embarked on three exciting growth
online sessions, workload, and assessments is critical. trajectories to set our University apart within the wider
higher education landscape, namely: Ocean Sciences,
Employee capacity development and upskilling initiatives Medical School, and Revitalising the Humanities.
on techniques relating to hybrid learning and teaching are
in place; they include “How-2” videos and documents, 3.1 Ocean Sciences
discussions and webinars. A UNESCO-funded project In 2021, the Institute for Coastal and Marine Research
has made it possible for senior students to be trained as (CMR) built strong links with the French Embassy and
ambassadors for open educational resources, assisting hosted Dr Olivier Bousquet. He serves as a Research and
academics in sourcing open educational resources and Project Manager for the French Embassy with expertise in
e-textbooks. international project design. His focus was on establishing
collaborations with key French, European Union and
The Faculty of Law regularly reviews programme offerings regional institutions in the South Western Indian Ocean
to ensure that these remain relevant and responsive to the to conduct transdisciplinary ocean sciences research. He
African context. During the national review of the LLB, the facilitated the development of transdisciplinary oceans
Faculty highlighted the need to Africanise and decolonise climate change research.
the curriculum by enhancing the mix of elective modules.
To this end, the Faculty introduced a new final year elective In March 2021, the CMR and partners hosted an online
module in 2021, focusing on Refugee Law. symposium titled ‘Shared Visions for Marine Planning:
Insights from Israel, South Africa and the United
The Faculty of Business and Economic Sciences (BES) Kingdom’. In September, under the leadership of our
recognised that heightened competition, locally and Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Research, Innovation and
internationally, required more innovative programme Internationalisation, the University hosted a delegation
design and a quicker transformation to online delivery from the French Embassy to strengthen ties to catalyse the
within the Business School. To keep pace with shifting implementation of key dimensions of our Ocean Sciences
market trends, 72 modules were developed for remote strategy.
online delivery to enhance our value proposition as a
Green Business School. The CMR manages the South African component of the
international One Ocean Hub project. As part of this project,
With food insecurity on the rise in South Africa, it was Prof. Boswell and a team of six emerging multidisciplinary
clear that the dietetics profession required more focus on researchers from the Faculty of Humanities completed
community health and preventative care. The Dietetics their first comprehensive field report on the socio-cultural
and Nutrition programmes were recurriculated to better impacts of forced removals and limited access to the
prepare graduates for optimum care. The Faculty of Health Marine Protected Area in Tsitsikamma. Prof. Boswell
Sciences was in the process of optimising short learning presented the report at the UK UNESCO Commission
programmes (SLPs) to generate third-stream income global conference entitled Heritage and Our Sustainable
in collaboration with various stakeholders, including Future: Research, Practice, Policy and Impact.
the Eastern Cape Department of Health. The Faculty’s
Emergency Medical Care department signed an MoU In addition, the transdisciplinary research in the field of
with Rescue South Africa for Nelson Mandela University to Ocean Sciences saw researchers from the Faculty of Health

12 | 2021