The year in cardiology: arrhythmias and pacing.

During this last year, there has been much progress with regard to anticoagulant and ablation therapy for atrial fibrillation (AF). Apart from recently issued European Society of Cardiology Guidelines for the management of patients with supraventricular arrhythmias, there has been little progress in research in this field. Ventricular arrhythmias and device therapy have seen modest progress

A realist assessment of the implementation of blended learning in a South African higher education context

Opportunities for further studies by working adults came under threat as the University of the Western Cape stopped the offering of after-hours classes in most of its Faculties. Unqualified and under-qualified librarians were directly affected by this decision. This article outlines an assessment of the conceptualisation and implementation of an action research project initiated by the Division for Lifelong learning. Using a realist evaluation approach, the assessment focuses on the implementation of strategies aimed at showing how lifelong learning opportunities, conceptualised and provided in flexible ways, could support innovation in learning and teaching in order to enhance access and success to learning by working people in the context of the Library and Information Science Department.DHE

Slow scholarship in writing retreats: A diffractive methodology for response-able pedagogies

The corporatization of universities has led to increasing pressure on academics to publish as quickly and prolifically as possible. Writing retreats have been used as one way of ensuring the production of academic articles by providing spaces for academics to write, and pressurizing them to publish shortly thereafter. This article provides an alternative way of viewing and conducting writing retreats – that of Slow scholarship, which foregrounds attentiveness, care, thoughtfulness and quality rather than quantity and production. A ‘response-able’ pedagogy is suggested as a way of enacting a Slow scholarship, using a diffractive methodology for reading and writing and responding to peers’ writing at writing retreats

The Anthropocene crisis and higher education: A fundamental shift

This article seeks to address a fundamental shift that has occurred in reality; a displacement that requires us to critically account for the ways in which knowledge is both being produced and taught at universities. The recent re-naming of the current geological epoch after anthropos has some chilling implications for humans and the ecosystems on which their livelihoods depend. As pedagogues, the crisis of the Anthropocene demands that we make drastic interventions in the way we teach and in what we teach. My aim is to suggest ways in which Deleuzoguattarian schizoanalysis, intersecting as it does with critical posthumanism, the affective turn and the new materialisms, might assist us in this process of crafting socially and environmentally-just pedagogies that are relevant to the contemporary situation. In so doing, I will address some of the uncanny ethical, ontological, epistemological and affective configurations of these theoretical perspectives to show how these ideas may impact the curriculum of socially/environmentally just pedagogies and the practice of such pedagogies in higher education.DHE

Teaching academic reading as a disciplinary knowledge practice in higher education

Many university lecturers expect students to be able to read disciplinary texts at the appropriate levels, and reflect critically and multidimensionally on those texts, yet are often frustrated by many students’ lack of ability to do so satisfactorily. While there is much research to suggest that academic writing needs to be taught within the disciplines as a practice linked to disciplinary knowledge, there is less research to make the same claims about academic reading, which is often referred to, rather, as a ‘skill’. This article argues for an overt focus on critical academic reading as part of disciplinary teaching and learning, and draws on a case study and lecturers' responses to questions on critical reading to show how an academic literacies and knowledge-focused approach can be useful to lecturers trying to help their students read in the disciplines

Dispelling e-myths and pre-empting disappointment: Exploring incongruities between instructors’ intentions and reality in asynchronous online discussions.

Provided that effective practices in online instructional design are met and e-myths regarding online learning are contested, asynchronous online sharing, knowledge construction, and knowledge creation or hybrids of these discourses. Within a naturalistic higher education setting, the authors revisited lingual data analysed in a previous study, employing Booth and Hultén’s (2003) taxonomy of pivotal contributions to online discussions to describe students’‘talk’ during text-based AODs. The taxonomy constituted a more comprehensive model of productive online discussion than that used in the earlier study. Contrary to the authors’ initial assumptions as novice e-instructors that students would not only share knowledge, but also co-construct knowledge, there was little evidence of the latter. In terms of Booth and Hultén’s (2003) analytic framework, functional moves were predominantly factual, while reflective contributions were uncommon. In other words, knowledge-sharing discourse rather than knowledge-construction discourse was the norm. In addition, participatory contributions were rare. The findings indicated that there was a mismatch between the authors’ expectations about students’ levels of cognitive engagement during their discussions and the instructional design. Thus, the authors interrogate their assumptions and identify design considerations that should underpin online pedagogy as it pertains to meaningful online discussion

Heteronormative higher education: challenging this status quo through LGBTIQ awareness-raising

This article focus on the challenges homophobia and transphobia pose to LGBTIQ students at the University of the Western Cape (UWC), a historically black peri-urban university located on the margins of Cape Town. Both the geographical location as well as the internal environment of the university give rise to various challenges for LGBTIQ identifying, and particularly gender non-conforming, students around their sexual freedom and self-affirmation. In transcending the vacuum between the challenges faced by these students and the existing human rights discourse on non-normative sexual orientations and gender identities, the Gender Equity Unit, through its student-driven LGBTIQ programme LoudEnuf, its support staff and in collaboration with the student structure GaylaUWC has been educating and sensitising the campus community through its intersectional awareness-raising initiatives. This article focuses on the effectiveness of awareness-raising in creating a welcoming, comfortable, liberating and safe campus for LGBTIQ students to access comprehensive quality education

Data sharing: A new editorial initiative of the international committee of medical journal editors. Implications for the editors´ network

The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) provides recommendations to improve the editorial standards and scientific quality of biomedical journals. These recommendations range from uniform technical requirements to more complex and elusive editorial issues including ethical aspects of the scientific process. Recently, registration of clinical trials, conflicts of interest disclosure, and new criteria for authorship -emphasizing the importance of responsibility and accountability-, have been proposed. Last year, a new editorial initiative to foster sharing of clinical trial data was launched. This review discusses this novel initiative with the aim of increasing awareness among readers, investigators, authors and editors belonging to the Editors´ Network of the European Society of Cardiolog

Transforming teaching with emerging technologies: Implications for higher education institutions

A gulf is widening between the technologies used by students, those used by educators and those provided by institutions. However, knowledge about the impact of so-called emerging technologies on learning or the readiness of higher education institutions (HEIs) to engage with such technologies in the South African context is relatively thin. This article uses Rogers’ (2003) diffusion of innovations model as a conceptual framework to examine the diffusion, adoption and appropriation of emerging technologies in South African HEIs. We report on a survey which examined how emerging technologies are used in innovative pedagogical practices to transform teaching and learning across South African HEIs. The article concludes that, in order to foster a greater uptake or more institution-wide diffusion of use of emerging technologies, institutional opinion leaders need to purposefully create an enabling environment by giving recognition to and communicating with change agents, and developing policies that will encourage institutional-wide engagement with emerging technologies.Department of HE and Training approved lis