About Us

The EBIT curriculum transformation committee was established in 2017. The committee’s first task was to develop a faculty transformation plan in response to the UP Curriculum Transformation Framework. (Both of these documents are available on this page.)

The EBIT Curriculum Transformation Committee (EBIT-CTC) is focused on teaching and learning. We consist mostly of academic staff, concerned with how teaching in EBIT can be most effective. (We do not address transformation of the staff complement or HR policies). We aim to be open, and to consult widely as we develop a shared understanding of why and how our teaching practices should transform. We do not expect to reach a single definition, or to achieve a known end-state. Rather, we are committed to a process of ongoing critical self-reflection. 

The curriculum is all the ways in which we engage with our students, and all the lessons that they learn, both intended and unintended. We formally define programmes and courses in the yearbook.  We choose and emphasise content as well as context through our textbooks, notes, lectures and examples. There is also a hidden curriculum, the transmission of norms, values and beliefs. All of these need to be reviewed and updated as our world is changing. How are we preparing students for a multicultural society, for extreme climate change, for the Fourth Industrial Revolution? Which legacies of the past do we need to renounce? How can we make our curriculum accessible to all our students? How do we enable and empower our students to meaningfully engage with multiple knowledges, and imagine and co-construct new knowledges for new times? How do we transform ourselves, as teachers and researchers, in service of our students’ journeys and their futures?

The EBIT-CTC is currently focused on what the practical application of an integrated curriculum will be in an EBIT space. Integrated curriculum defined here as: A curriculum that facilitates a learning experience that includes professional development as well as technical knowledge and critical thinking.

The objectives of the committee is:

  1. to consider what the current status quo is on integrated curricula in the different EBIT Schools and develop a workable framework that can be presented to Schools a) without this integration currently present; b) an updated version of integration where integration already exists
  2. identify potential modules where it is feasible to implement integrated curricular approaches as pilots within faculties, including strategies for approval; 
  3. Develop concepts that need to be part of a training program for staff to become expert facilitators of active integrated learning.

As an example, we will spend the beginning part of 2021 to evaluate the JCP Community Engagement Module, to actively develop students ability to relate to each other and community while working towards a technical outcome through a guided process. Diversity and inclusion are not concepts that we need to only understand with our minds, but we need to understand and reflect on our experience and reactions when placed in different contexts to foster a different perspective or sense of belonging.

Some Schools within EBIT already address these quite well and in those schools the focus will become a refining of such an integrated curriculum to also address inclusivity which will feed back into the overall discussion of integrated curricula structures in other Schools.

The EBIT-CTC has the following members:

Lelanie Smith (Chair), Helen Inglis, Alta van der Merwe, Adriana Botha, Sizwile Dlamini, Danielle Hill, Zakkiya Khan, Schalk Kok, Patricia Lutu, Masego Maungwa, David Walwyn, Tapfuma Chanaiwa, Elizabeth Stanley, Brian Ndlovu, Lebogang Masike, Thabang Ngwenya, Makoena Sebatjane 

If you would like to join, please contact [email protected]

 

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