The culture of excellent teaching is firmly entrenched at UP across all fields of study. Our committed academics have multiple approaches to teaching to ensure that students with a variety of learning strengths succeed:
It is evident that the 2021 academic year will require the University to pivot to remote teaching and learning, at any stage, depending on the lockdown level. The general guidelines for undergraduate teaching are as follows:
The University is committed to ensuring that all our students complete their academic year successfully. Student success remains a priority. To facilitate this, it is essential that lecturers keep on teaching during scheduled class times to discuss difficult concepts and answer questions.
UP introduced a flipped-learning methodology that requires students to prepare thoroughly for class, complete pre-class assessments and engages in class. This model articulates well with online teaching and learning as it requires lecturers and students to use their online clickUP courses and encourages students to prepare independently for each class. If you need help, please contact EI Support.
The clickUP help site and Blackboard help site contain many resources on how to use all the above-mentioned tools. You may also contact the e-support office, but the response time might be slower during this period due to high volumes of requests.
| Educational consultant | Instructional designer | |
|---|---|---|
| EMS | Elmien van Amerom | Donald Tive |
| Education | Dr Marius Pienaar | Jacky Maroga |
| EBIT | Vacant | Alastair Smart |
| Humanities | Marena Lotriet | Gaby Pretorius |
| LAW | Dr Sanet Haupt | Dennis Kriel |
| NAS | Dr Ina Louw | Mpho Thukane |
| Theology | Dr Marius Pienaar | Gretchen Jacobs |
| HEALTH |
Vacant |
Dr Hannelie Untiedt Nomathemba Ngcobo Erika de Bruyn |
| VET | Dr El-Marie Mostert | Velly Nkosi |
| Mamelodi | Faith Mathibedi | Philip Mthembu |
 |
At the very least, the Study Guide and your clickUP module should stipulate a clear, weekly work schedule so that students can keep up independently. Quality instruction requires students to come to class prepared, as this enables new teaching to build actively on existing knowledge. Students can prepare for the class using traditional textbooks, eTextbooks, PDF & Word files, videos or publishers learning systems. For more information about creating your own videos, click here. For YouTube videos URLs to be zero-rated please see the guidelines.
Assess before class: Students’ preparedness for each class should be assessed before the online class. These assessments provide valuable information to a lecturer that can be used during contact or virtual sessions to address misconceptions.
Inquiry-based learning (i.e. teaching by questioning and not by telling, following Socrates) enables students to think, communicate and justify their ideas. Some lockdown levels require mainly online teaching during regular scheduled class time to discuss difficult concepts and answer questions (contact or virtually - depending on the lockdown level). This will keep students on track and make them feel safe!
Some face-to-face teaching with a limited number of students attending their classes physically due to the social distancing requirements. In cases where class sizes exceed the number of students that are allowed in a venue, as prescribed by the national lockdown regulations, students could be divided into smaller groups and allowed to attend classes on a rotational basis. In this case, all lectures should be broadcast live to other students and recorded for later viewing. A small portable USB AVer 340+ camera (provided by the departments) could be used with any laptop to enable the live streaming of classes via Bb Collaborate. For instructions on how to use the Aver 340+ Camera to stream and record Collaborate lectures, click here.
Blackboard Collaborate also provides the opportunity to record sessions and share recording links with students (see video). These videos could be made available to students in clickUP and used for remedial and revision purposes. Assignments and assessments after class provide further opportunities for students to consolidate their knowledge and organise it into meaningful hierarchical patterns.
All UP academic staff are invited to apply for a grant to undertake research into the teaching of your discipline with the aim of developing your teaching and research capacity and improving student learning and success. The funds are part of the University of Pretoria’s Teaching Development Grant provided by the Department of Higher Education and Training. We have a number of one-year grants available for UP lecturers worth a maximum of R30 000 each. The purpose of the grant is to promote institutional research to improve teaching and student learning and success. Applications by individuals and teams will be considered on merit:
One of the most important and basic requirements for student success is to ensure that all students have access to essential course materials. It is therefore essential to promote the use of free material. Download the UP Open educational resources (OER) guidelines. We want to invite all UP lecturers to apply for the Open Educational Resources (OER) Grants 2021. We have thirty grants available for UP lecturers, and each grant is worth a maximum of R10 000. To apply, lecturers are required to access the necessary information here: https://tinyurl.com/ydhkdo7v. Contact Dr Marius Pienaar or Dr Sanet Haupt.
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