Arts Faculty: Blended Learning Arrangements [planning & design prior and during Covid-19 pandemic/national lockdown]

Arts Faculty: Blended Learning Arrangements [planning & design prior and during Covid-19 pandemic/national lockdown]

Wednesday, March 31, 2021

 

During the 2020 academic year a number of 285 online modules were created within the iKamva platform by Arts Faculty Lecturers. In collaboration with the CIECT team, the lecturers were able to attend online eTools workshops and one-on-one consultations to design and develop the online environments. During these sessions, lecturers were introduced to the use of the institutional Learning Management System iKamva, Personal Learning Environments (PLEs), Turnitin (Tii) as well as Google Applications (GAPP’s).

 

Lessons eTool: Embedding multimedia learning material

Specific multimedia learning materials have been developed and embedded into the online environments enabling students to engage with course content from any geographical setting via their mobile devices. Lecturers within various departments across the Faculty structured their online environments, making use of the ‘Lessons eTool’ to share relevant learning material, including podcasts and narrated presentations - with the students.

 

Online Tutorials and Consultations: ‘ePreps’

The lecturers developed ‘ePreps’ which were submitted online and marked before the tutorial class. Tutors were allowed to address specific problem areas during online tutorials. Furthermore, Turnitin integration was enabled to allow the written pieces to be checked for plagiarism via the Assignment eTool in iKamva. Both lecturers, tutors and students have made use of chat rooms (within iKamva) for tutorials and consultations.

 

Various question types for isiXhosa online assessments

Formative assessments for students engaged in the isiXhosa Modules (XHO 002 and XHO003) have been set up online and included various question types to test students' understanding and application of the language. Question types such as true or false; multiple choice questions (MCQ); ‘fill in the blank; and matching were included within the three different online tests. The tests were divided into parts which assessed different concepts and terms. Key phrases were listed in English and students were required to type their answers in isiXhosa. Some test questions also included images whereby students were required to match the image with the correct phrase.