This project, funded by the Teaching Development Grant, explores current perceptions and practices around Open Educational Resources (OER) by staff and students at CPUT. The first phases consist of collecting data through a survey instrument. In phase 2, we are supporting academics, who are interested in developing OER for their own teaching. Their feedback on the process will help design appropriate support mechanisms for further development of OERs at CPUT.

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This nationally funded project investigates the teaching and learning practices of your people from rural backgrounds in Higher Education. It explores the dimensions of rurality and its influence on the transitions to higher education amongst students from rural backgrounds in universities in eight Southern African countries. It investigates how students from rural areas learnt in the home, community, and school and how this subsequently influenced their learning at university.

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This URF funded project, investigates staff’s perceptions of the CPUT merger through digital storytelling, interviews, and focus groups. Three digital storytelling workshops have been held with approximately 20 staff members. Currently, we are interviewing these participants to explore the potential such workshops have to reflect on issues of transformation.

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This RIFTAL funded project aims at evaluating a range of recent implementations at CPUT, including the paperless office, CPUTs mobile app and the provision of e-books in the library.

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The CPUT multilingual glossaries project focuses on subject-specific terminology with the aim of promoting multilingual teaching and learning of key concepts. This project will also contribute to the development of scientific terminologies in African languages for different study fields with the aim of advancing African languages to a status of scientific and academic readiness/usage. There is a number of subjects across CPUT academic departments that currently have translated and verified multilingual glossaries ready for use, click on the link below.

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StoryA is a project funded by the EU and consisting of nine international partners. Through a series of initiatives –international meetings, seminars and conferences, local workshops and cultural activities– the project aims at enhancing the use digital storytelling, to guide young people to self-evaluate their competences and capabilities acquired abroad. The purpose is to improve the quality and the recognition of youth work and non-formal learning by encouraging young people to turn their life and working experiences gained in foreign countries into learning opportunities recognizing the skills and key competences acquired during the mobility. Living or working abroad, for a short or long period, are unconscious informal learning moments that can be turned into more useful experiences if one encourages people to reflect upon it and share them. The project contributes to strengthening the role of youth in the society and speed up the process of active participation in South Africa and beyond.

This project funded by STIAS aimed to design, implement and evaluate practical interventions to 1. raise student teachers’ awareness of systemic inequalities that are inherent in South Africa’s society, and 2. to explore with these student teachers how they may intentionally or unintentionally reproduce social injustices and inequalities in their own teaching practice. This project is linked to Professional Studies, a course offered at final year level in the School for Education and Social Sciences at CPUT.

This National Research Foundation (NRF) funded project investigated the potential of a new theoretical framework framed by the affective turn and post-humanism for the implementation of critical and socially just higher education pedagogies. This theoretical framework was aimed at helping to develop innovative pedagogical practices in higher education that could respond more productively to the challenges facing South African Higher Education.

This NRF funded research project examined both students' experiences related to participatory parity in achieving qualitative outcomes as well as higher educators' experiences of using transformative pedagogies to make it possible for students to achieve these outcomes. The focus of the research was on particular disciplines and professions in differently located and positioned HEIs. In order to accomplish this, it investigated the enablements and constraints that students experience in different professions and higher education institutions in being able to participate as peers in achieving qualitative outcomes in education. Secondly, and building upon this knowledge, it investigated how transformative pedagogical practices can be used to enable students to achieve qualitative outcomes.

This NRF funded project studied the impact of skilling pre-service teachers with digital storytelling on their readiness to teach multicultural classrooms effectively. Thus the project utilised digital storytelling by CPUT pre-service teachers as a tool to explore perceptions and competencies for teaching diverse classrooms. This project was designed as a response to research which showed that most South African teachers join the profession ill-equipped to handle diverse classrooms. It was hoped that this project would help teachers to intentionally create a culturally sensitive learning community through the use of digital storytelling. This project was funded by the National Research Fund.

The NRF project "Emerging ICTs in Higher Education", is a joint project by eight institutions of Higher Education in South Africa. The study investigated how qualitative outcomes in education can be realised through the use of emerging technologies to transform teaching and learning interactions and paradigms across differently positioned higher education institutions in South Africa. The intention of the project was to develop models to improve quality fore redressing inequalities in Africa.

The Centre for e-learning has been involved in staff development activities in teaching and learning with technology for over a decade, while the Educational Technology Unit, Fundani CHED, has participated in similar work for 4 years. Over these years of practice, the effectiveness of the staff development strategies employed has never been measured. Thus, this study focused on evaluating the effectiveness of CPUT teaching and learning with technology staff development strategies by administering a survey and conducting follow-up interviews, with an aim of improving the training based on the needs of CPUT staff members. The project was funded by RIFTAL.

This project funded by the CPUT University Research fund (URF) was aimed at transferring experiences gathered in the Education pilot into other departments at CPUT (Nursing, Graphic Design, Architectural Technology, Industrial Design). As part of this project, we developed different models of integrating Digital Storytelling into the Curriculum. Role: Co-investigator.

This project funded by the CPUT RIFTAL fund investigated the use of podcasting in teaching and learning at CPUT. 20 lecturers at CPUT were equipped with digital recorders and trained in recording, editing and disseminating podcasts for their students.

This project investigated the use of clickers in three courses at CPUT, using cultural-historical Activity Theory (CHAT) as a theoretical and analytical framework. By employing the method of change laboratories, the use of clickers in the classroom was evaluated, to assess possible contradictions, and in collaboration with staff members, models were developed to improve current teaching practices involving clickers.

This Research in Innovation in Teaching and Learning (RIFTAL) funded research project was aimed to describe, evaluate and research the use of digital storytelling as an innovative teaching and learning practice for pre-service student teachers at CPUT Education Faculty. Digital storytelling facilitates the convergence of four student-centred learning strategies: student engagement, reflection for deep learning, project-based learning, and the effective integration of technology into teaching.

The Educational Technology Unit, Fundani and the eLearning Centre carried out an institution-wide survey for staff and students on their access, use and perception on Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) at CPUT. This project is partly funded through the CPUT RIFTAL (Research in Innovation in Teaching and Learning) fund. Results of this study informed policy-making around educational technology development at CPUT, and proved invaluable to the university in gaining a real sense of how staff and students experience ICT at the institution, to increase access to ICTs and to improve the quality of learning in the future.

Bladergroen, M., Chigona, W., Bytheway, A., Cox, S., Dumas, C., & Van Zyl, I. 2012. Educator discourses on ICT in education: A critical analysis. International Journal of Education and Development using ICT, 8(2): 107 – 119.

Bozalek, V., Gachago, D., Alexander, L., Watters, K., Wood, D., Ivala, E. & Herrington, J., 2013. The use of emerging technologies for authentic learning: A South African study in higher education. British Journal of Educational Technology, 44(4), pp. 629–638. Online: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bjet.12046/full

Condy, J., Chigona, A., Gachago, D., & Ivala, E., 2012. Preservice students’ perceptions and experiences of digital storytelling in diverse classrooms. Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology (TOJET), 11(3), pp. 278–285. Available online: http://tojet.net/articles/v11i3/11326.pdf

Gachago, D., Ivala, E., Backhouse, J., Bosman, JP., Bozalek, V., & Ng’ambi, D., 2013. Towards a Shared Understanding of Emerging Technologies: Experiences in a Collaborative Research Project in South Africa. The African Journal of Information Systems, 5(3), article 4. Available online: http://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1149&context=ajis

Gachago, D., Livingston, C. & Ivala, E., 2016. Podcasts: A technology for all? British Journal of Educational Technology, 47(5), pp.859–872. Available at: http://doi.wiley.com/10.1111/bjet.12483

Ivala, E. & Gachago, D., 2012. Social media for enhancing student engagement: The use of Facebook and blogs at a University of Technology. South African Journal for Higher Education (SAJHE), 26(1), pp. 152-167.

Ng’ambi, D., Brown, C., Bozalek, V., Gachago, D. & Wood, D., 2016. Technology enhanced teaching and learning in South African higher education - A rearview of a 20 year journey. British Journal of Educational Technology, 47(5), pp.843–858. Available at: http://doi.wiley.com/10.1111/bjet.12485

Stewart, K. & Gachago, D. 2016. Being human today: A digital storytelling pedagogy for transcontinental border crossing. British Journal of Educational Technology, 47(3), pp. 528–542. http://doi.wiley.com/10.1111/bjet.12450