An investigation into the performance and problems of first-year engineering students at the University of Cape Town

Bibliography: leaves 203-208.The first- and second-year results of the 1989 engineering student intake were analysed and revealed that matriculants from Black Education Departments performed significantly worse in the first year than those from White Education Departments. Matric point scores were found to be good predictors for White Education Department matriculants, but less so for Black Education Department matriculants, with matric Physical Science a better predictor than matric Maths, for both first- and second- year courses. Using interviews and a survey of students, a set of academic and non-academic problems experienced by first-year engineering students were identified with black students found to have experienced a particular set of problems to a greater degree than white students. The data produced a portrait of the interaction between first-year engineering students and the academic and social systems of the university. The dominant feature that emerged was one of distance between the individual students and elements of the university environment, including staff, fellow students and the academic material. Factors from the student's personal and educational background that appeared to accentuate this experience of distance were identified. Recommendations to the Engineering Faculty were compiled on the basis of this analysis together with student suggestions for improving the first-year engineering programme

New academics negotiating communities of practice: learning to swim with the big fish

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Teaching in Higher Education on 5 June 2008, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/13562510701191943.This paper explores the use of situated cognition theory to investigate how new academics learn to judge complex student performance in an academic department at a South African university. The analysis revealed the existence of two largely separate communities of practice within the department, one centred on the provision of undergraduate teaching and the other on the production of research. Newcomers follow a range of trajectories in the course of their identity construction as academics and their learning is strongly shaped by their histories and individual experiences of negotiating their way into and across these key communities of practice. Learning to assess student performance in an Honours research paper was found to be integrally linked to the process of gaining entry into the research community of practice with limited opportunity for legitimate peripheral participation given the high stakes context within which assessment decisions are made

Unearthing white academics’ experience of teaching in higher education in South Africa

The real and imagined racial differences and similarities between groups of students and staff have consequences in everyday experiences in South Africa. One aspect of engaging with the challenges facing higher education transformation post-Apartheid is through understanding how the racialized context interacts with the experience of teaching. This paper reports on what the narratives of four white academics reveal about their experience of teaching at the University of Cape Town (UCT). It analyses indicators of their identity as white academics and how they are both positioned and actively position themselves in relation to students and other academics at UCT. Their narratives reveal how academics simultaneously grapple with the privileges and limitations that accompany identifying as white. These tensions are explored through issues of black student development amid an alienating institutional culture and opposition to the behaviour of their white colleagues

The challenge of teaching large classes in higher education in South Africa : a battle to be waged outside the classroom

In this chapter, I explore the size and discipline of the largest classes offered at two higher education institutions in South Africa and based on the evidence at four institutions make the case that large classes is a minority phenomenon with less than 28% of courses offered having more than 100 students registered. I suggest that large classes offer unique opportunities for delivering the quality learning experience we wish for our students. However, taking advantage of these opportunities require significant planning, support and expertise. I also discuss current practices that undermine the efforts of individual lecturers to achieve effective learning in their large classes

Learning to assess in the academic workplace: case study in the natural sciences

A study into how academics learn to assess student performance affirms the significance of context in understanding learning in the academic workplace. The study involved three case studies in academic departments with significant differences in the teaching, research and professional dimensions of academic life. This article reports on the experiences of new academics in one of the case studies, a department in the Natural Sciences. This case study highlights how relationships between colleagues, opportunities for conversations about assessment practice, and the alignment of assessment practices with the kinds of capital valued in each context are important considerations in understanding the ease, or difficulties, new academics experience in learning to judge student performance. Programmes that aim to help academics develop their assessment practice need to recognise that learning to judge student performance involves developing confidence to create and use opportunities to learn within the academic workplace

Malignancies Associated With Inflammatory Bowel Diseases

Inflammatory Bowel Diseases (IBD), specifically Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, have been associated with numerous intestinal and extra- intestinal malignancies. Recent studies have suggested use of immunomodulator therapies has increased risks of malignancies, including melanoma, non-epithelial skin cancers, cervical cancer, and bladder and urinary tract cancers. The question regarding how biologic agents, which became a mainstay therapy of IBD in the early 2000s, have influenced malignancy risk among patients with IBD has yet to be definitely answered. The aims of this study were to characterize prevalence of comorbid malignancies among hospitalized patients with IBD and how it has changed over the past decade, to develop a sense of the chronology by which malignancies present in IBD patients relative to the general population, and to identify malignancies that are less well defined in the context of IBD. The overall hypothesis of this work is that the prevalence of co- diagnosed malignancies among hospitalized patients with IBD has changed significantly over the study period. This is a cross-sectional analysis characterizing the comorbid malignancies of hospitalized patients, with and without IBD, across the United States at two time points, spanning nearly a decade. Using the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project - Nationwide Inpatient Sample (HCUP-NIS) database years 2002 and 2003, and 2010 and 2011, the absolute and percent prevalence of malignancies were calculated for patients with and without IBD, stratified by age. A prevalence rate ratio was calculated to assess rate of change of prevalence in patients with IBD relative to patients without IBD. There was no difference in prevalence of colon cancer among IBD patients in 2010-2011 compared to 2002-2003, across all age groups. Both anorectal and colon cancer rates were increased among patients with IBD compared to those without. There was an increase in the co-diagnosis of Non-Hodgkin lymphoma and IBD in the 58-67 year old age group in 2010-2011 compared to 2002-2003. Cervical cancer prevalence was increased among 38-47 year old women with IBD, and non-epithelial skin cancers were increased among older IBD patients. There were no statistical differences in rates of Hodgkin lymphoma, leukemia, melanoma, pancreatic and bladder cancers between patients with or without IBD. Substantial changes in the prevalence of several types of cancers among hospitalized patients with IBD have occurred in the study time period. There continues to be an increased risk of colon, anal, and rectal cancers. The prevalence of bladder cancer, pancreatic cancer, melanoma, Hodgkin lymphoma, and leukemias among hospitalized patients with IBD has not significantly increased among IBD patients in the study period. Thyroid cancers, non-epithelial skin cancers, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and cervical cancer rates were increased among IBD patients relative to the general population. Further investigation into these associations is warranted

Outcomes Following Heart Transplantation In A National Cohort: An Analysis Of The Organ Procurement And Transplantation Network’s Database

In this analysis, we examine a large national cohort within the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network’s (OPTN) United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) database for the purpose of determining the impact of a recipient history of myocarditis as well as donor/recipient ABO compatibility on outcomes following heart transplantation. We used a nationwide sample with primary stratification between ABO identical and compatible heart transplantations or transplant recipients diagnosed with myocarditis and those diagnosed with ischemic or idiopathic cardiomyopathy. The primary end-point was graft failure from all causes. Post-transplant survival was compared between groups using univariate Kaplan-Meier as well as multivariate Cox proportional hazard and logistic regression models. ABO compatible recipients were generally sicker than ABO identical recipients before transplant as a larger proportion were Status 1A, in the ICU, and on mechanical ventilatory support (p \u3c 0.05). Multivariate analysis did not demonstrate adverse outcomes associated with ABO compatible transplants in terms of decreased graft survival (hazard ratio 0.99, p = 0.87). Blood type O donor grafts, however, were associated with poorer outcomes compared with all other types (p \u3c 0.05), which has important implications for current graft allocation policies. For recipients with a history of myocarditis, survival was comparable with ischemic or idiopathic cardiomyopathy. Patients with myocarditis were more likely to be female, younger, in the ICU before transplant, and on ECMO, ventilatory support, and VAD pre-transplant (p \u3c 0.05). Transplant recipients diagnosed with myocarditis were more likely to die from acute (p \u3c 0.05) and chronic graft failure (p \u3c 0.05). Strategies to safely bridge these patients to transplant such as mechanical circulatory support should be considered earlier in the disease. Furthermore, this analysis suggests that post-transplant outcomes of patients with a history of myocarditis could be improved with more intensive immunosuppression

Becoming an academic : a study of learning to judge student performance in three disciplines at a South African university

Includes bibliographical references (p. 209-214).This study seeks to understand how new academics learn to judge student performance in complex assessment tasks, i.e. tasks that allow students substantial initiative and latitude in their response. It was conducted at a research intensive historically white university in South Africa and involved case studies in three academic departments. Thirty one academics were interviewed across the three departments. The analysis of these cases was conducted in two parts, using a framework developed from Bourdieu's theory of practice and Lave and Wenger's situated learning theory. In the first part, I analysed the academic workplace in each case and identified three different configurations of communities of practice that formed key dimensions of the fields within which these departments were situated. In the second part, I applied the concepts of habitus and legitimate peripheral participation (LPP) to understand how new academics engaged with the communities of practice in their departments and learnt how to judge student performance of complex assessment tasks. The study revealed limitations in the explanatory power of social learning theory in contexts where the stability of communities of practice was uncertain, where there were no opportunities for LPP and where knowledge was deemed to reside in the individual rather than to be distributed in the community. In contrast to the view that learning in the workplace is informal and unstructured, in each of the case studies it was possible to identify a learning to judge trajectory, which, in some cases more than others, provided a structured "learning curriculum" (Wenger, 1998) for new academic staff. Learning to judge student performance happened through participation in a series of assessment practices along this trajectory. The experience of following a learning to judge trajectory was closely associated with the identity trajectory of each individual academic and depended on three factors: the particular configuration of communities of practice within each field, the capital valued within this configuration, and the nature of the capital that the newcomer brings into the department. However, the existence of these trajectories did not mean that learning was unproblematic, as they appeared to support the dominant relationships of power within each field and posed particular challenges for those individuals who embarked on alternative trajectories

Asserting agency: Navigating time and space for teaching development

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Race and assessment practice in South Africa: understanding black academic experience

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Race Ethnicity and Education on 27 February 2012, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/13613324.2011.645568.Despite efforts to transform the racialised system of higher education in South Africa inherited from apartheid, there has been little research published that interrogates the relationship between race and the experience of academic staff within the South African higher education environment. Drawing on critical discourse analysis and critical race theory, this article traces the experience of two black male academics in relation to the assessment practices of their colleagues at a historically white university in South Africa. The interviewees, both graduates from the departments in which they teach, reflected on their experience of their departmental assessment practices both as black students and black academics. The analysis concludes that despite their differing perceptions and experiences they both regard the assessment practices of some of their white colleagues as undermining of their black students' efforts to succeed