Date and Time: Thursday, 18th August 2022 : 16:00 – 17:00 SAST
Leading the Session: Esther Gacicio, Edtech Consultant & Co-Founder of eLearning Solutions (eLS) and Gabriel Konayuma, Senior TEVET Officer, Ministry of Technology & Science in Zambia
In this session we will discuss the emergent issues in the TVET sector, with examples from Kenya, Zambia and Africa at large. We will also look at what can be done to make sure that this sector is at the same level as the other areas of education.
One of the lessons learnt from and during the pandemic is that TVET has been left behind in the integration of educational technologies in the Sector. Could this be because of the design of the lessons and the content or lack of the know how in how to integrate technology?
Presenters Bios:
Esther Gacicio is an Edtech Consultant & Co-Founder and CEO of eLearning Solutions (eLS) (www.elearningsolutions.co.ke; www.elsat.elearningsolutions.co.ke ), a company leveraging on digital technology to design, deliver and deploy learning and training solutions, across the spectrum; to the youth, institutions and corporates. She consults for the World Bank in the Global EdTech Team (GEAK Unit) and is an Independent Consultant with Results for Development (R4D) as well as an International consultant alongside Common Sense, eLearning and Training Consultants (Austria). She is a member of Specialist Network of the EDTech Hub, a global non-profit research partnership on technology in education. Esther previously served as a Senior Assistant Director at the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD) where she oversaw design, development and sourcing of education technologies to enhance quality, access, equity and relevant education among other projects such as the Kenya education Cloud and Elimika program. Esther is currently serving in the Board of Technical and Vocational Education and Training Authority (TVETA).
Gabriel Konayuma is Senior TEVET Officer, Ministry of Technology & Science in Zambia, the UNESCO-UNEVOC Country Coordinator, an e/Merge Africa Network Country Representative, a Board member of the Network for OER and Multi-modal Self-Directed Learning in Southern Africa and experienced Senior Vocational Education and Training Officer with a demonstrated history of working in the technical education and vocational training sector. He is skilled in Strategic Planning, Public Speaking, Training, Research, and Teaching. He has facilitated online courses for TVET staff in Zambia to build their capacities in technology-enabled learning. He has strong community and social services professional with a Master of Education – MEd focused in ICTs in Education from University of Cape Town.
COVID-19 forced a global emergency pivot to online learning, which has led to an increased demand on both staff and students, with major impact on workloads, research careers, and mental health. Across the globe, academics complain of burn-out, exhaustion, and lack of self-care. This has heightened the concern around the well-being of students and staff (Czerniewicz et al, 2020, Imad, 2021) and has led to an increase in interest in approaches to teaching and learning that recognise the importance of care and compassion, such as humanising pedagogies (Pacanksi-Brock, 2020); pedagogies of equity and care (Bali, 2020) or trauma-informed pedagogies (Imad, 2021).
These frameworks create space to ask important questions on how to respond to the affective dimension of teaching and learning, and learning design, how to care for students and ourselves, how to set boundaries and highlight the importance of relationship- and community building. This workshop will briefly introduce some of these terms and frameworks and then explore what compassion means in our context and practice. This will be a highly interactive workshop.
In this interactive sessions, we share a framework that we co-designed that we have titled Compassionate Learning Design (CLD) and discuss how it evolved and how we are developing it further. Our Learning Design Voices chapter grew out of design considerations we developed for context-sensitive networked professional development (Gachago, Pallitt & Bali, 2020; NLEC et al, 2021) and theories of social justice (Fraser, 2005; Tronto, 2015). We used it as a lens to contrast how we supported educators at our universities to create and facilitate context-sensitive and flexible learning experiences with and for students. In our Toward a Critical Instructional Design chapter we explain designing with empathy to co-designing with compassion and further discuss the intersecting praxis of participation, justice, and care.
We view CLD as a praxis that involves anticipation of learner needs and inequities therein, imagination of potential approaches to address diverse circumstances, and respect for learner agency, starting from responsiveness to learner feedback, and driven by a desire for “parity of participation” (Fraser 2005; Hodgkinson-Williams & Trotter, 2018) wherein all learners, including the most marginalised, are involved in decision-making in their learning experience.
Pallitt, N., Bali, M., & Gachago, D. 2022. Academic Development as Compassionate Learning Design: Cases from South Africa and Egypt. In T. Jaffer, S. Govender & L. Czerniewicz (Eds.),Learning Design Voices. Advance preprint.https://doi.org/10.25375/uct.20028431
Pallitt, N.; Gachago, D. & Bali, M. 2021. No Size Fits All: Design Considerations for Networked Professional Development in Higher Education.Conceptualizing and innovating education and work with networked learning. Eds. Nina Bonderup Dohn, Stig Børsen Hansen, Jens Jørgen Hansen, Thomas Ryberg and Maarten de Laat. To be published by Springer, NY.
Networked Learning Editorial Collective (NLEC): Gourlay, L.; Rodríguez-Illera, J.L.; Barberà, E.; Bali, M.; Gachago, D.; Pallitt, N.; Jones, C.; Bayne, S.; Børsen Hansen, S.; Hrastinski, S.; Jaldemark, J.; Themelis, C.; Pischetola, M.; Dirckinck-Holmfeld, L.; Matthews, A.; Gulson, K.N.; Lee, K.; Bligh,B.; Thibaut, P.; Vermeulen,M.; Nijland, F.; Vrieling-Teunter, E.; Scott, H.; Thestrup, K.; Gislev, T.; Koole, M.; Cutajar, M.; Tickner, S.; Rothmüller, N.; Bozkurt, A.; Fawns, T.; Ross, J.; Schnaider, K.; Carvalho, L.; Green, J.K.; Hadžijusufovi?, M.; Hayes, S.; Czerniewicz, L. & Knox, J. 2021. Networked Learning in 2021: A Community Definition. Postdigital Science and Education, 3, 326–369 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-021-00222-y
Session Led by:
Daniela Gachago is an Associate Professor at Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching (CILT) at the University of Cape Town. Her research focuses on academic staff development in the use of emerging technologies to transform teaching and learning in higher education, with a particular focus on socially just pedagogies such as digital storytelling. She is also interested in innovative course and curriculum design drawing from co-creative approaches such as design thinking.
Maha Bali is a Professor of Practice at the American University in Cairo’s Center for Learning and Teaching. She is co-founder of virtuallyconnecting.org (a grassroots movement that challenges academic gatekeeping at conferences) and co-facilitator of Equity Unbound (an equity-focused, open, connected intercultural learning curriculum, which has also branched into academic community activities Continuity with Care, Socially Just Academia, a collaboration with OneHE: Community-building Resources, and a 3-month learning journey, MYFest). She writes and speaks frequently about social justice, critical pedagogy, and open and online education. She blogs regularly at http://blog.mahabali.me and tweets @bali_maha
Dr Nicola Palitt is an Educational Technology Specialist at senior lecturer level in the Centre for Higher Education Research, Teaching and Learning (CHERTL) at Rhodes University in South Africa. Nicola’s research interests include learning design, online professional development and online supervision. She supervises postgraduate students and co-teaches formal courses in Higher Education and co-facilitates professional development opportunities for lecturers in various settings. She received her PhD from the University of Cape Town. Read more about Nicola here – hyperlink to https://www.ru.ac.za/teachingandlearning/chertl/staff/drnicolapallitt/
In our lives, work and organisations we experience cycles of change. The surprise or shock of the new, the reassurance of something reliable that continues, the sadness, separation or relief of letting something go, the energy and delight of renewal. You are invited to use this time together to engage with the questions of what to grow and what to let go that are alive for you. Let’s use dance and drawing to be fully present as we each think and feel our way forward.
We will introduce a new experimental structure called Dance and Draw which is designed to facilitate an embodied, creative and reflective experience of engaging with your version of the questions in your work or personal life. Dance as is right for you: on or off screen, in or out of your chair. Arrive with anything that you need to draw or paint. Bring your whole self for an adventure in movement and emergence. This short workshop is inspired by the Ecocycle liberating structure and by processes used by some Biodanza facilitators.
Guiding the session:
Tony Carr is an Educational Technologist in the Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching at University of Cape Town and convenor of e/merge Africa.
Irene Maweu is an Online Facilitator for e/merge Africa Facilitating Online course, Instructional Designer and an eLearning Content Developer
