With Ariane Janse van Rensburg & Jolanda Morkel

YOU ARE INVITED

The main intent of this upcoming live online event is to continue discussions and the sharing of resources and experiences across Africa, in Architectural Education, but not limited to it. Anyone interested in Learning and Teaching, specifically in project-, problem- and enquiry based contexts, is invited to participate.

Ariane Janse van Rensburg will share the AEF UIAreport back document and Jolanda Morkel will highlight the main issues adressed in the newly released International Student Charter, after which discussion, either by audio or text chat, is invited.

THE ARCHITECTURAL EDUCATION FORUM

The Architectural Education Forum was the outcome of a Symposium on Architectural Education hosted by the Wits School of Architecture and Planning, South Africa, in early 2014 and is a grouping to critically discuss how to improve architectural educational practice here and now and to exchange relevant information. Its main focus is issues that are relevant to architectural education in Africa, especially sub-Saharan Africa, which includes global and regional concerns. Its membership consists mainly of teaching staff from schools of architecture from over Africa, but there has also been support and interest from other associations concerned with architectural education based on other continents.

The immediate aim was to enable architecture lecturers who attended the symposium to continue a constructive discussion on current research and practice generated by the challenges of teaching in a transformative way in changing circumstances in South Africa.
The need for such a forum had already been expressed at a previous conference on “Changing Paradigms” in 2013 and the fact that many interested parties would be together in Durban for the UIA Congress seemed an excellent opportunity to continue the conversation.

The Forum started informally as a group of people who wanted to be notified about the next discussion, but it has been growing steadily ever since. The AEF hosted a congress session at the UIA Congress entitled “Architectural Education Otherwhere – seen from the South”, which resulted in poster outputs and engaging discussion (see UIA report back document). At the UIA it was agreed that the AEF would approach e/merge Africa to facilitate an online meeting to strengthen ties and llinks across Africa and beyond.

AEF activities are presently being convened by Ariane Janse van Rensburg of the University of the Witwatersrand and Jolanda Morkel of the Cape Peninsula University of Technology. For further information the contact
e-mail is [email protected]

To sign up for this event, please use the form below

Regards
Jolanda

	Ariane Janse van Rensburg is a Senior lecturer in design and teaching and learning convenor in the School of Architecture and Planning, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.BAS (UCT), B.Arch (UCT), M Arch by Research (Wits). Current PhD research on enabling transformation in architectural education. Ariane turned to full-time teaching after extensive years in urban and rural architectural practice. She is involved in various university teaching and learning and transformation bodies and serves on SACAP and CAA accreditation panels. Currently she is completing a PhD in architectural education. She started the Architectural Education Forum after a successful symposium hosted at Wits this year. She also co-presented the ‘Architectural Education Otherwhere – seen from the South’ workshop with Jolanda Morkel at the UIA 2014 Durban congress
	Jolanda Morkel is a qualified architect and senior lecturer in the Department of Architectural Technology in the Faculty of Informatics and Design at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology. The focus of her research and current doctoral studies in Design is the virtual learning environment for mastering conceptual design. She is investigating how emerging technologies may support the collaborative studio learning experience online.

15 October – 17 October 2014

We are continuing our short seminar with Professor Gilly Salmon, which started 15 October and runs until 17 October. During these three days Professor Salmon will take us through the Carpe Diem model for course creation. To be a part of this, please start by accessing the seminar landing page to view the resources made available. Then please take part in the conversation in the seminar discussion forum; to add your thoughts, questions and comments please sign in to our live site first. If you are not registered yet, this can be done by choosing Register at the top of the page. During the seminar we will be providing regular e-mail summaries and other useful information. If you have already signed up using the form below we already have your e-mail address, if not we invite you to do this as soon as possible. We are looking forward to your engagement!

A big thank you to those of you, who were able to join us Friday 17 October for the one hour live session with Professor Gilly Salmon. In case you missed this session the recording is now available here.

Academic staff in Higher Education need to transform their teaching practices to support more future-oriented, digital, student-centered learning. Promoting, enabling and implementing these changes urgently requires acceptable, meaningful and effective staff development for academics. We identify four key areas that are presenting as barriers to the implementation of successful staff development. We illuminate the Carpe Diem learning design workshop process and illustrate its impact on academic staff as a viable, constructive alternative to traditional staff development processes. The Carpe Diem model directly exposes and addresses the irony that educational institutions expect their academic staff to learn to design and deliver personalized, mobile and technology-enhanced learning to students, whilst wedded to ‘one size fits all’ face-to-face interventions…or worse, ‘page turning’ e-learning that masquerades as staff development. To avoid further frustrations and expensive, inappropriate initiatives, the spirit and practice of Carpe Diem could act as a ‘pathfinder beacon’, and be more widely adopted to enable fast, effective and fully embedded, learner-ready, future-proofed learning.

Professor Gilly Salmon has been a digital learning innovator for more than 20 years . She was the founding director of All Things In Moderation, in 2001.She was appointed Pro Vice-Chancellor of Learning Transformations at Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia and has recently taken up a new appointment as Pro Vice-Chancellor (Education Innovation) at the University of Western Australia. Professor Salmon is well-known in the learning design community, particularly for her Carpe Diem learning design method. She holds a PhD from Open University, United Kingdom and an M.Phil. from Cranefield University, United Kingdom.

6 October – 10 October 2014

This seminar is coming to end today, however the seminar landing page is still available. Access to view a presentation by Wanjira Kinuthia and a presentation by Dr. Perien Boer and visit our discussion forum.

Thank you to those of you who took part in the live meeting on 8 October. The recording of this session is available here and has been added as a resource to the landing page.

ICTs and the significant growth in internet usage thoughout the African continent has over the past decade opened up for many opportunities for ICT supported course design. However, challenges still remain when using technology for course design. What are these and more importantly how can they be overcome or at least mitigated? During this one-week seminar these and other issues will be raised. This seminar will start 6 October and end 10 October and will be presented by Associate Professor Wanjira Kinuthia from the Learning Technologies Division at Georgia State University, Atlanta, United States and Lecturer in Educational Technology Dr. Perien Joniell Boer from the University of Namibia.
During this week Wanjira and Perien will discuss and open up for a debate on what constitutes good learning design, using educational technologies. Among the topics will be how we create courses and use technologies effectively in African contexts, where we are often faced with severe technical limitations. Moreover, how do we implement and use technologies in a context where educational needs are much more different and urgent compared to other areas in the world, such as e.g. the US and Europe. These include considerations for Open Educational Resources (OER) and Mobile Learning solutions in higher education and how to engage both learners and instructors.
Together with our two presenters we are inviting you to take part in this conversation to share your experiences and learn more about the challenges faced by educators located at the African continent from a learning design perspective.

Wanjira Kinuthia is an associate professor of learning technologies at Georgia State University. Prior to that, she worked as an instructional designer in higher education and business and industry for several years. Wanjira has a special interest in international and comparative education, with a focus on sociocultural perspectives of instructional design and technology. Her research focuses on educational technology in developing countries, looking at how information and communication technology (ICT) is infused into instructional setting. Recent projects have included the role of Open Educational Resources (OER) and Mobile Technologies in bridging the digital and knowledge divide. She has edited several books and published articles based on her work in these areas.

Dr. Perien Joniell Boer is a Lecturer in educational technology at the Faculty of Education at the University of Namibia. Dr. Boer has researched and published about educational technologies and integration nationally in Namibia and also the relations between pedagogies and ICT usage in education.