Session format: Once-off webinar

Date and Time: Monday 28 October, 2 pm (SAST)

Presenters:

Sioux McKenna, Director of the Centre for Postgraduate Studies (CPGS), Rhodes University

Amanda Mphahlele, Lecturer, Department of Business Management, University of Johannesburg 

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The misuse of text-matching software in universities actively encourages students to plagiarise. While there is no doubt that plagiarism needs to be addressed to maintain academic standards and to safeguard the integrity of the academic project, there is a significant misunderstanding about what text-matching technologies do. This presentation draws from Amanda’s PhD study and a number of co-publications that Amanda and Sioux have produced to look at how text-matching software has been understood across the South African higher education sector. An analysis of institutional policies from public universities across South Africa and interviews with members of institutional plagiarism committees reveals that technology is a key facet in these universities’ attempts to reduce the incidents of plagiarism and that Turnitin is the most favoured text-matching tool. However, the software is misunderstood to be a plagiarism detection tool and is used mainly for policing purposes, ignoring its educational potential for student development. These misunderstandings were found to direct students to behave in undesirable ways.

Sioux McKenna is the Director of Postgraduate Studies at Rhodes University where she runs a number of support initiatives for supervisors and scholars. Sioux also runs a large PhD programme in higher education studies, with research focusing on teaching and learning, national qualification frameworks, the development of institutional policy, university governance, and alignment between policy and teaching, learning and assessment. 

Sioux’ particular concern is with who gets access to higher education and how the norms and values of the institution emerge as literacy practices. She has authored over sixty articles and book chapters, including co-authoring two books: Going to University (2018, African Minds) and Calling for Change (forthcoming, UKZN Press). Sioux has extensive experience in higher education having served on the South African accreditation committee for seven years and participating in institutional reviews in South Africa, Oman, Egypt and Bahrain.  Sioux is also the project manager for a number of international collaborations, including a national supervision development course, Strengthening Postgraduate Supervision (www.postgradsupervision.com), and an online Creative Commons site, Enhancing Postgraduate Environments (www.postgradenvironments.com). Professor Sioux McKenna – [email protected]  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1202-5999

Amanda Mphahlele is a lecturer in Business Management at the University of Johannesburg and researching plagiarism for her PhD in Higher Education Studies through Rhodes University.

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Session format: Once-off webinar

Date and Time: Thursday 17 October 2019 12:30 pm (SAST)

Presenter: Dr. Judith Pete, Tangaza University College of the Catholic University of Eastern Africa, Kenya  

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In order to obtain a fair ‘OER picture’ for the Global South, a large-scale study has been carried out for a series of countries, including Kenya. In this webinar, I report on the Kenyan study, run at four universities that have been selected with randomly sampled students and lecturers. Empirical data have been generated by the use of a student and a lecturer questionnaire to which in total 798 students and 43 lecturers have responded.

Selected from the very rich source two major outcomes are: (i) there is a significant digital differentiation among lecturers and students at urban versus rural universities in terms of their proficiency and internet accessibility; and (ii) the awareness and appreciation of the OER concept and open licensing is low but from the actual processing by respondents of educational resources (not necessarily open) a ‘preparedness for openness’ can be derived that promises well for the future.

Resources:

Open Praxis articles:

• Differentiation in Access to, and the Use and Sharing of (Open) Educational Resources among Students and Lecturers at Technical and Comprehensive Ghanaian Universities
• Differentiation in Access to, and the Use and Sharing of (Open) Educational Resources among Students and Lecturers at Kenyan Universities
• ROER4D. 2017. Adoption and Impact of OER in the Global South.
• Pete, J. 2019. Open Education Resources Differentiation: A Cross-country study on Differentiation in Access, Use and Sharing of (Open) Educational Resources at Universities in Kenya, Ghana and South Africa. 
• YouTube video where Judith shares a short discussion about her research

Dr. Judith Pete is a Lecturer and Research Coordinator at the Tangaza University College of the Catholic University of Eastern Africa in Nairobi, Kenya. She recently graduated with her PhD from the Open University Nederlands at the Faculty of Management, Science and Technology; with her thesis on OER Differentiation, a cross-country study in three countries in Africa. She is part of the GO-GN network and was one of the researchers involved in the ROER4D project. She has also been a consultant with Hewlett Foundation through GO-GN on Diversity Equity and Inclusion project

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Presenter: Dr. Heba Mohamed Abdel-Latif, Educational technology and e-learning, Supreme Council of Universities, Egypt

Time and Date: Arabic language webinar 10 October 2019 3 pm (SAST)  

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For more information and to sign for this and other Arabic language events please see the e/merge Africa Arabic site

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