Browsing by Author "Ferreira-Meyers, Karen"

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    Book Review: Guide to Blended Learning by M. Cleveland-Innes with D. Wilton
    (2019-07) Ferreira-Meyers, Karen
    This compact yet complete Guide to Blended Learning is a welcome addition to the arsenal of useful resources published every year by the Commonwealth of Learning. Eight chapters, a reference list and two appendices (one is entitled Community of Inquiry Blended Learning Evaluation and the second one is COL's Blended Learning Design Template) open up the world of blended learning to both newcomers in the field, researchers and other private and public stakeholders such as teachers and lecturers who have already been implementing blended learning in their respective professional fields (first and foremost in the field of teaching and learning), but want to improve their skills.
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    Building Resilience through Quality-Assured Online Courses: the COTE Programme
    (2022-09) Ferreira-Meyers, Karen
    PCF10 Sub-theme: Building Resilience [POSTER] // The poster will give an overview of the quality-assurance steps undertaken in the design and development of a certificate programme entitled Online Teaching for Educators offered by the Institute of Distance Education of the University of Eswatini (Eswatini, Southern Africa). The focus is on capacity and resilience building as the Covid-19 pandemic made it clear that staff members in various education sectors were struggling to make the transition from face-to-face and blended learning to fully online learning. I will discuss the steps undertaken to continue developing teaching staff’s knowledge, skills and attitudes while facing adversity. A detailed list with possible advantages and disadvantages of those steps and actions will show that what has worked best is a combination of online activities (courses, webinars, meetings) together with small face-to-face interactions for some participants. The paper concludes by proposing a model for continued staff development (based in part on work done by Ceesay, 2021 and Mino, 2020). While the staff development activities discussed here are firmly rooted in a Swazi context, the lessons learned are useful to universities and other organisations beyond the borders of Eswatini, beyond the region too. // Paper ID 1624
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    Enhancing Teacher Education through the Application of Open Science Principles
    (2022-09) Ferreira-Meyers, Karen; Dhakulkar, Amit
    PCF10 Sub-theme: Building Resilience // Teacher education continues to pose a formidable challenge to the Global South. The Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated the lack of qualified teachers. Together with qualified staff, it is clear that relevant and local teaching-learning resources are essential if governments wish to enhance the teaching and learning processes. Solutions to the lack of qualified teachers/educators/lecturers and to that of localised resources (such as Open Textbooks) are not easily encountered. We propose a novel community-based approach (Ferreira-Meyers & Dhakulkar, 2021) to tackle this dual challenge by innovative use of technology. Our proposed approach is based on the principles embedded in the Open Science Framework (OSF) and envisions creation of grassroot-level communities of practices via networking of teachers and students. In this work we present a model through which the principle of openness can be put into practice for teacher education and address the various challenges in this task. The model makes use of different OSF aspects to create a teacher-student community of practice with a peer network of “critical friends”. It offers the opportunity to extend “openness” to teachers and students by fostering sharing, collaboration while also focusing on self-directed learning and constructionist pedagogy. // Paper ID 1286
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    Ensuring Employability and Widening Access: The Case of The University Of Eswatini
    (2019-09) Ferreira-Meyers, Karen
    The University of Eswatini (formerly known as the University of Swaziland) has an Institute of Distance Education since the mid nineteen nineties. The introduction of blended learning in 2017/2018 throughout the University means some of the mandates of the Institute have now been overtaken. Changing mandates, changing policy environment (an IDE Policy document is circulating as we speak, with possible adoption before the end of this year), changing world, changing Swazi society.// In my contribution I aim to show how the Institute of Distance Education could transform and reposition itself in order to assist the nation with satisfying its educational and professional development needs, in particular when it comes to entrepreneurship, languages and related study areas. Enhanced stakeholder involvement is, in my view, one of the ways in which IDE can ensure that it responds to societal needs.// One of the major developments is that through blended learning 'traditional' faculties may now be able to attract a higher number of students than in the past (when this was not possible, mainly due to infrastructural limitations). This constitutes a major 'threat' to the Institute. One way of counteracting this threat is to introduce training courses (short and long) that can be delivered online or in a blended manner (with limited face-to-face offerings in the students' workstations, if they are employed). Intensified stakeholder involvement is able to construct strategic partnerships with both internal and external stakeholders. It is necessary to research this new direction as it might change the face (and content) of what occurs in the Institute of Distance Education in the Kingdom of Eswatini.// Paper ID 253