UP’s Director of Comprehensive Online Education Services, Prof Linda van Ryneveld, chats about her path from cumbersome desktop computers to sophisticated online learning.

Professor Linda van Ryneveld’s household was one of the first in her neighbourhood to own a personal computer. It was a bulky thing that operated with floppy disks. You inserted a flat square plastic or metal “floppy” into the computer to bring up the programme you needed, then put in another to print, and if you wanted the text to be highlighted in bold, you almost had to code to do so, she recalls, laughing. “It was massively complicated.”

But Prof Van Ryneveld, then in Grade 11, was hooked. Even if the computer never lived up to her father’s expectation of being able to streamline writing the short stories and plays the education department director dabbled in, she loved its prototype games such as Tetris. Of course, she had no idea that this cumbersome machine would be the forerunner of what would eventually become such an integral part of her career.

Today Prof Van Ryneveld is the Director of Comprehensive Online Education Services, which is responsible for UPOnline at the University of Pretoria (UP). Working with Higher Ed Partners SA, UPOnline offers two postgraduate courses, one in public health and the other in public management. Nothing like the old-school correspondence courses of the past, or the emergency online teaching and learning that characterised the COVID-19 period, these are fully interactive digital learning programmes. And they are of the same high standard as UP’s in-person courses.

Prof Van Ryneveld extols the value of online education: students benefit from UPOnline’s accessibility and flexibility, and the University benefits financially, because once an online programme has been created, it can be scaled to accommodate a large number of students at minimal cost.

And she is still fascinated by technology – “specifically as a cognitive tool, how we can use it to make our lives easier and more efficient, and how suddenly the world has become so small that everything I need to know is on this thing”, she says, holding up her cellphone. “Put me on an island, and as long as there’s fresh water, Wi-Fi and my phone, I will be fine.”

Despite her initial affinity with computers, it was quite by chance that she became aware of their educational value and power. She first studied BEd, then honours in non-formal education, all at UP. She was then set on doing a Master of Business Administration, and had even bought the books to brush up on her maths for the Graduate Management Admission Test entrance exam. Until she heard Prof Johannes Cronjé – who was at UP at the time (now at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology) – whom Prof Van Ryneveld refers to as “a guru of e-learning”, speak at a conference. She was completely hooked, she says, and knew immediately that online education was the path for her.

Although her own formal education was all in-person, she has studied everything from open educational resources and new technologies, to obedience training for dogs and cooking online.

“Technology changes all the time, so all the technologies I'm familiar with are things I’ve studied on my own, whether through formalised online courses, or by trial and error, and making sure that I play and investigate and explore until I master those skills.”

As for cooking, Prof Van Ryneveld says: “If you ask my husband, he’ll say I didn’t learn anything,” she says, laughing. “In my defence, though, our tastes differ quite significantly; I like rich, spicy, creamy food and he likes his food boiled and bland.”

When she joined UP in March 2013, it was as Director of Teaching and Learning at the Onderstepoort campus.

“Apart from computers, my other passion is paying it forward, making things available for free,” she says. “Learning cannot be something that is elitist – only available to those who have the money to pay for it. And so, my sideline passion is open educational resources. The Faculty of Veterinary Sciences had a big open-resource agenda back then and they recruited me to drive the project. I loved it. It was challenging because it’s not my field, but we built the African Veterinary Information Portal as an open repository for the unique content produced by the faculty.”

For just over seven years, almost every aspect of her life has been intertwined with that of UP, as she has been heading the male residence, House Mopane, on Hillcrest campus, where she is known as “Prof Linda”.  The experience has enriched her life.

“Mopane is home to 200+ testosterone-driven young men,” she says. “I have been fortunate to witness the remarkable achievements of these youngsters who come from diverse backgrounds and cultures. I am so proud of the values that make Mopane a sought-after res: inclusivity, respect and a commitment to excellence in everything we do.

“It has been a personal journey of growth. You hear so many things that make you question the future of our beloved country, but when I look at these extraordinary young men in res, our next generation of leaders, I am filled with hope for a bright future.”

Prof Van Ryneveld moved from Johannesburg to Pretoria when she was five and has lived here ever since, except the one year she spent gallivanting the globe after her honours degree while her husband-to-be did his pupillage to become an advocate. She taught at a summer school in America, was a nanny for a Sir and Lady in England, bagged bananas and worked in a fish factory on a kibbutz in Israel, and spent time on the beaches and in the mountains of Thailand.

She still loves travelling, whether it is to present at conferences, which she regards as one of the perks of her job, or to the family farm in Musina, near the Zimbabwe border, with her family that now includes two UP-educated sons, an advocate and a drama coach, aged 27 and 24. 

Her next big trip is the move to their new home in Hartbeespoort, complete with a hi-tech fridge that comes with an app “I haven’t figured out yet”, she says. Even the likes of Prof Van Ryneveld can find technology a bit daunting at times, even if it is a far cry from the days of the cumbersome computer at her childhood home.