New models for improving teaching and training in engineering and technology transfer in South Africa

South Africa is in great need of improving the effectiveness of engineering and technical tuition and also enhancing technology transfer from universities to industry, the commercial sector and communities. These practices can create new job opportunities and increase the level of living standard of populations at all levels. This article highlights some models that were recently implemented at the School of Engineering of the University of South Africa in Johannesburg in order address these challenges. These included new on-line teaching methodologies with an emphasis on group work and project-based outcomes, new methodologies of work-integrated learning, the creation of an undergraduate-postgraduate dualism, a focus on innovation and product development at graduate level, and the creation of community entrepreneurship winter school programs. Measures as implemented contributed to an increase in enrolment rates 10 per cent over four years from the online teaching programmes in the diploma programme, enhanced placement of work integrated students, and eventually increased the graduation rate at graduate level by about 15 per cent over four years. Several new small companies have been created from winter school programmes

Spartan Daily, October 25, 1965

Volume 53, Issue 24https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/4766/thumbnail.jp

Ethical inclusive curricula design : conversational teaching and learning

Abstract: South African Public Universities are facing transitional challenges as they traverse uncharted territory in decolonising knowledge. The idea of decolonising knowledge brings with it the need to review curricula as well as the lecturer’s pedagogy. A cybernetic approach using conversation theory is presented as a viable solution to inclusive and ethical contextual curricula design. Through conversation, contextual enquiries can be achieved which are then used as reference points in revising curricula. In this paper, a report back on a recent curriculum re‐design is presented. The results of this process have been positive with students demonstrating increased participation, personal responsibility, and higher motivation in performing assignments. Other positive features are that students introduce new and relevant topics into the curriculum. These topics are contextualized by the students (and teacher) allowing for student interpretations of the content in terms of their daily lives, i.e. the students populate the curriculum with experiences they have had within their communities. There is increased social engagement in the classroom with students also dialoging in community with one another and the teacher. The abstraction of the curriculum is reduced in turn increasing the familiarity and personalization of the module content areas. This personalization effect was found to improve memory retention of the module content as the grades were higher for the topics that were proposed by students

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Suffolk University Alumni News Bulletin, Vol. 2, No. 4, January 1973

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From first-generation guestworkers to second-generation transnationalists: German-born Greeks engage with the 'homeland'

Few studies have been made of the 'return' of the second-generation children of migrants to their parental homeland. In this paper we examine this 'migration chronotope' for German-born children of the Greek labour migrants who moved to Germany in the early postwar decades, initially as 'guestworkers', later becoming more-or-less settled immigrant communities. We focus on two life-stages of return: as young children brought back to Greece for annual holidays or sent back for longer periods, usually to stay with grandparents; and as young adults exercising an independent return, usually leaving their parents (the first generation) behind in Germany. Our source material is twofold: a review of the limited German literature of the 1970s and 1980s on Greek migration to and from Germany; and our own recent field research in Berlin, Athens and Thessaloniki where we interviewed 50 first- and second-generation Greek-Germans, the majority of them second-generation. We find the practice of sending young children back to Greece to have been surprisingly widespread yet little documented. Often such family separations and transnational childhoods were disruptive, both for the family unit and for the individual child. Memories of holiday visits, on the other hand, were much more positive. Independent, adult return to the parental homeland takes place for five main reasons, according to our interview evidence: (i) a dream-like 'search for self' in the 'homeland'; (ii) the attraction of the Greek way of life over the German one; (iii) the actualisation of a 'family narrative of return' inculcated by the parents but carried out only by the adult children; (iv) life-stage triggers such as going to university in Greece, or marrying a Greek; and (v) return as 'escape' from a traumatic event or an oppressive family situation. Yet adapting to the Greek way of life, finding satisfactory employment and achieving a settled self-identity in the Greek homeland were, to a greater or lesser extent, challenging objectives for our research participants, some of whom had become quite disillusioned with Greece and re-identified with their 'German side'. Others, on the other hand, were comfortable with their decision to 'return' to Greece, and were able to manage and reconcile the two elements in their upbringing and residential history. Comparisons are made with other studies of second-generation 'return', notably in the Caribbean

Spartan Daily, December 18, 1968

Volume 56, Issue 54https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/5070/thumbnail.jp