Making Connections in Context

We started our day off bright and early today, as we have every day since we have been in South Africa. We typically have breakfast about 7:30am and are on the road to NMMU by 8:00am. Most evenings return about 7pm and we are so exhausted that it is hard to even process, much less blog!  Our days have been long and full, but the work is rewarding, for us and we hope for our colleagues at NMMU as well.

The Teaching & Learning team started our day by meeting with several department heads in the School of Behavioral Sciences, which includes Psychology, Social Work, and Environmental Health. We learned that they are concerned with how to engage students in large lecture classes, as their numbers have grown substantially and many lectures now range from 150 - 900 students.  In addition, they are currently engaged in a process of what they term "recurriculating" - meaning examining and  redesigning their curriculum - in light of some new government and accrediting body requirements and  changes within the university. Together, we brainstormed practical strategies they might consider implementing in the department to meet some of these challenges.  It was truly exciting to collaboratively develop ideas that really seemed feasible and that may actually be implemented or at least built upon after we leave. This particular experience helped to frame many of the teaching and learning issues facing students and academic staff (faculty) at NMMU and, on a personal level, helped me to see many connections between what I am learning about in my HALE classes and how these ideas play out in an authentic context. The external and internal influences on the curriculum and the teaching and learning processes become clearer the longer we are here and the more we engage with our South African colleagues. At dinner tonight, we had a chance to do some reflecting as a group and I could tell by the depth of the conversations that we are all gaining so much from this experience.

Today I also had the chance to talk with some colleagues who are working on issues around internationalization and multi-lingual language policies at NMMU. Since it's so late right now and I want to be at least somewhat functional for our last working day at NMMU tomorrow, I won't go into those issues right now, but I promise to post again and return to them as they are very interesting issues to explore. Good night!