Stott, AngelaScheepers, Stefanus Johannes2025-01-082025-01-082023http://hdl.handle.net/11660/12931Dissertation (M.Ed.(Higher Education))--University of the Free State, 2023Scripted lessons serve as guides for instructors in various educational circumstances, promoting pedagogical consistency. This study explored the use of semi-scripted lessons in the context of higher education, specifically on a large module that utilised hybrid teaching methods (online and face-to-face) across two campuses. This large module employs a considerable number of teaching assistants (TAs) to teach sections of the module, despite not being specialised instructors. Using the Community of Inquiry framework as a guide to gathering empirical evidence, a pragmatic, sequential, exploratory, three-phase (quantitative-qualitative-quantitative) mixed-methods research methodology was implemented to explore the effectiveness and implications of semi-scripted lessons. Convenience sampling was used in Phase 1 to observe 31 TAs’ hybrid teaching practices across the two campuses. The four highest-scoring TAs, two per campus and one per hybrid mode were chosen as exemplary TAs to be interviewed in Phase 2. An additional TA who had been awarded the “Best Presenter of the Year’ the previous year was also interviewed. Phase 3 comprised a full population survey sent to all the TAs and staff members involved in the module. The design of this survey was informed by the findings of the previous phases, and its purpose was to examine ways to improve the TA training programme. Descriptive statistics were used to analyse Phases 1 and 3 and thematic analysis for Phase 2. It was found that semi-scripted lessons contributed to the enactment of consistent, effective teaching and cognitive presences across the hybrid classrooms. However, while the semi-script included high-order thinking activities and discussion prompts, the TAs’ capacity to facilitate these were found to be lacking. Furthermore, the semi-script was found to be least effective at promoting the enactment of social presence, primarily due to TA avoidance of the scripted collaborative activities, due to time constraints. The social presence that was observed, largely arose from TA initiatives beyond the script, and these were evidenced considerably more in face-to-face than in online classes. Findings from the third phase provide suggestions for improvements to the TA training programme: optimisation of the training objectives; extending the training to five days; providing early access to the course material; devoting more time for TAs to practise facilitation, and receiving comprehensive feedback. The significance of this study lies in its exploration of semi-scripted lessons in the given context by providing support for this approach, while also highlighting its limitations. The primary limitation of this study is its context, which focused on TAs in a unique higher education setting, using semi-scripted lessons. Although this provided in-depth insights for comparable circumstances, the extent to which the findings could be generalised to other contexts would still need to be determined.enCognitive presenceCognitive loadCommunity of Inquiry (CoI)Face-to-face teachingHybrid teachingPedagogical practicesOnline teachingSemi-scripted lessonsSocial presenceTeaching presenceDissertationUniversity of the Free State