Dr Lizette de Jager from the Department of Humanities Education was selected to participate in the TAU Fellowship Programme for 2018 and 2019. Her project titled “Integrating Apps for English teaching through online collaboration” aimed to develop student learning in English through online collaboration by incorporating technology into the instructional design of lessons. The project has since been expanded to include Sepedi, IsiZulu and Afrikaans. The research team consists of Dr Alta Engelbrecht (Afrikaans), Dr Connie Makgabo (African languages), Prof Ronel Callaghan (Technology), Mr Jody Joubert (Technology) and Ms Nicola das Neves (Assistant). Thirteen participating pre-service teachers each received a tablet to use for the project in their searches for relevant Apps. They collaborate online in a ClickUP module to refine their searches and evaluate the Apps they found.

The project is implemented in five phases, which include:

• A pre-intervention workshop where students are divided into communities of inquiry to identify the four most important requisite competencies for the language teacher, as well as the types of technology that will be used in their own lessons.
• A research, selection and evaluation phase which includes searching for Apps and evaluating these against set criteria.
• An instructional design phase where students collaborate to design and practice an interactive language or literature lesson.
• An intervention phase where students implement the actual lesson during their official Teaching Practice internship, which will be assessed by lecturers with feedback.
• A post-intervention phase where the outcome of the intervention will be evaluated during a workshop, focusing on the experiences of the student teachers.

The project currently finds itself in phase four of the implementation process. It is anticipated that the outcomes of this project will have value for both the lecturers and the student teachers involved and lead to transformed practice.