Masters Degrees (School of Higher Education Studies)

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Browsing Masters Degrees (School of Higher Education Studies) by Advisor "Jacobs, Lynette"

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    Improving cultural intelligence of education students through an education module
    (University of the Free State, 2017-06) Nel, Christoffel Cornelius; Jacobs, Lynette
    English: The value of teacher Education programmes should be recognised as being instrumental in the development of future learners and citizens of South Africa. Furthermore, the intention of specific Education modules should be planned according to outcomes based on contributing to more Culturally intelligent teachers. Nevertheless, many South African teachers do not have the necessary skill set to provide students in their classes with an appreciation for diversity and social differences. Students need to be nurtured to understand different cultures and have to interact with different cultures to learn from one another. This learning process contributes to Cultural intelligence, in short, CQ. This research study was conducted on the University of the Free State’s South Campus to determine whether a possible change in CQ was evident amongst two groups of students. The Education module, which specifically focuses on social reflections and issues of diversity, was compared to a control group of students in Economic and Management Sciences. This was done to determine if the Education module might have contributed to an increase in CQ as one of its unintended outcomes. Furthermore, a document analysis was conducted on the materials used in the Education module. This was done using the guidelines provided by David Plowright, namely deconstructing the materials to determine the informational, presentational, representational and interpretational value thereof. After analysing the data, I can confirm that the Education group of students had improved their levels of CQ in all domains of CQ, compared to the control group of students, who had only improved in the behavioural domain of CQ. Additionally, the growth in Meta-cognitive CQ that Education students had experienced was statistically significant, compared to the control group of students. This contributes to my argument that the materials used in the Education module had nurtured a deeper understanding and higher reflective ability in these Education students. In conclusion, I can recommend that, firstly, the relevant lecturer plays an important role in shaping the students in classroom by starting these difficult dialogues. Secondly, having lesser students in a classroom, as was the case on South Campus, also contributes to a better relationship between the lecturer and the students. Finally, the content used in an Education module should be designed according to definite outcomes to contribute to delivering a better teacher when leaving university.
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    Instructional design standards for online learning material at South African higher education institutions
    (University of the Free State, 2023) Du Preez, Isabella; Jacobs, Lynette; Möller, Johan
    The quality of online learning is a contentious topic in higher education, partly because it is elusive in that there is no uniform and concrete definition for it, but also because there are countless standards, principles and instruments as attempts to establish quality in online learning. These quality initiatives, however, emanated mostly from the Global North, with little or no consideration for the challenges online practitioners face in the Global South. What is evident, though, is that more and more pressure is put on online practitioners to ensure and enhance the quality of these learning programmes. One such group of practitioners are termed instructional designers: responsible for the design and development of online learning material. In Sub-Saharan countries such as South Africa, the instructional design profession is still in its infancy stage, facing a lack of published quality standards from the qualification authorities on the design and development of online learning material. Research on the practices of these instructional designers in the African context is also scant. As a novice instructional designer at a dual-mode higher education institution, I am responsible for the design and development of online learning material and often find myself questioning whether the material that I am designing can be regarded as effective and engaging. My research question was born out of my own need for contextualised standards specifically for online learning, as I realised that online learning is mostly judged in terms of its online learning material. I therefore posed the following research question: what standards, relevant to the South African context, can be used to design and develop quality online learning material? My study is based on the model of writing two interrelated publishable manuscripts, both focusing on two crucial aspects of instructional design, namely pedagogy and visual design. In the first manuscript (Chapter 2), I followed a qualitative approach to analyse 12 global and local quality guiding documents to distil key pedagogical and visual presentation principles for the design and development of online learning material. This study revealed 19 pedagogical principles, with the most eminent ones being collaboration and the fostering of higher-order thinking skills. Thirteen visual presentation principles were identified, with multi-modality and personalisation being the most prominent. I concluded the first manuscript by proposing a framework depicting key pedagogical and visual presentation principles for instructional designers to use when they design and develop online learning material. In the second manuscript (Chapter 3) the aim was to gain insight into how some experienced South African instructional designers view and translate quality when they design and develop online learning material. Following a qualitative research approach, I conducted in-depth interviews with nine experienced instructional designers in South Africa. The interviews revealed that human connectedness is a top priority for South African instructional designers, and they do so by intentionally incorporating a teaching presence and collaborative learning activities. The quality principles mentioned by participants coincide with the community of inquiry model ensuring sound practice from a pedagogical and visual design point of view. In my final chapter, I intended to respond to the main research question. I used the insights gained in each of the manuscript to synthesise standards relevant to the South African context that can be used to design and develop quality online learning material. I propose a set of standards with comments on how to adapt it for the Southern context where applicable, also alluding to challenges to implement these standards as a means for instructional designers to mitigate and address them proactively. It is my hope that this set of standards can assist novice instructional designers in their design and development practices of online learning material.
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    Supporting east Asian students enrolled at a South African university
    (University of the Free State, 2019-01) Xie, Tao; Jacobs, Lynette; Muller, Marguerite
    Over the previous 30 years, most East Asian (South Korea, China, Japan) countries have achieved remarkable economic success, and are entering the global economic market. Therefore, more and more East Asian parents support their children to study in other countries. Chinese parents, for example, may consider that studying overseas inter alia would enhance their children's competitiveness in terms of learning other languages, especially English and understand different cultures, getting a good quality of education, learning from other countries’ different sets of values. They thus consider studying overseas as a long-term investment towards global citizenship. Due to different language, culture, and learning styles between the East Asian and English-speaking countries, these students often find it difficult to adapt to the new environment. As an East Asian student myself, I had found it difficult to adapt to the circumstances in South Africa. As I could find no reference in literature to the problem in the context of South Africa, the aim of my dissertation was to explore and describe the challenges of East Asian students studying at one South African English-medium university towards improving the support provided by higher education institutions. Based on my literature review I gathered that East Asian students studying abroad often find challenges with academic and social practices. The literature also highlighted difficulties in terms of transport and accommodation. The level of support varies at different institutions, and in different parts of the world. Based on my literature review, I developed some interview questions which I posed to six East Asian participants and seven staff members at the University of the Free State. I transcribed the data, and sorted similar themes based on what the literature and data indicated as relevant. My study showed that East Asian students experience barriers with regard to language and the academic practices. In terms of language, the students shared that it was difficult to understand English, and in particular also to follow the different accents. Adjusting to continuous assessments, with diverse assessment tasks was also difficult, as it is quite different from the systems used in their own countries.The interviews with the staff members revealed that many units exist to assist the students, albeit not specifically for East Asian students. Services include support for international students in terms of administrative issues such as study permits, registration and so forth. There are units that assist students with academic writing, studying methods and many more. For me, the most significant observation was that while the East Asian students were struggling, the university seemed to have numerous support structures in place that could help them to overcome these challenges. However, the students seemed to be unaware of the services that they could make use of. It became clear that it is vitally important that universities find a way to continuously make English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students aware of the services that could assist them.