by
ikudu Blogger
| Apr 24, 2020
Written by: Merle Henriette McOmbring-Hodges, external adviser for the iKudu projectMy academic journey started in a dusty town called Kraaifontein. A farm school, Lawrencia Primary, stimulated my love for people and a ‘bush college’, the University of the Western Cape (UWC), my excitement to learn, debate, and grow others. My stint at the University of Leeds is responsible for my belief in social construction of knowledge and internationalisation. This story covers a journey of pioneering education through collaboration.
It was against this background that I was invited in 2010 to join my first European Commission (EU)-funded project, the Erasmus Mundus mobility programme. In 2012, I was very proud to be invited by the EUROSA project, an Erasmus Mundus Action 2 scholarship programme funded by the European Commission and coordinated by the University of Antwerp under the leadership of Piet van Hove, to join them as their first SA joint coordinator. This project accomplished a record of five successive funded proposals, written by Annelien Dewinter and her team. As the local joint coordinator, I was responsible for coordinating and managing mobility flows between South African and European universities.
This is where I learnt how to work as an EU-SA coordinator, building a community of practice based on trust, transparency, and pride in what we have achieved. It was through this euphoric collaboration that Anouk De Weerdt visited the Kruger National Park and saw a herd of impala whose survival rests on awareness, agility, and social cohesion.
She decided to compose an acronym for a Capacity Building in Higher Education (CBHE) proposal funded by the European Commission, creating the IMPALA project for four disadvantaged SA HEIs in collaboration with an EU university network coordinated by the University of Antwerp.
I – Internationalisation and
M - Modernisation
P- Project for
A – Academics
L – Leadership and
A - Administrators |
We had no blueprint to follow except our EUROSA. We have developed a thriving community of practice through which we worked, laughed, cried, danced, and shared deeply to support our young graduates and academics to become confident enough to apply for and accept scholarships to study in Europe.
It was a highly challenging task.
IMPALA had an extremely difficult task to build five SA-EU teams to develop five actions around specific internationalisation themes, including COIL virtual exchange. We could only achieve this by (once again) growing communities of practice called action committees, which we coined IMACS (Impala action committees). For this project, I was asked to coordinate the IMACS at each South African partner university, assuring that the people working in the teams were able to develop and showcase their results (action committees). The Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) community was one of them!
It was through the success, specifically of the COIL community, that we started dreaming of a bigger animal emerging and evolving from the impala.
That animal was a KUDU!
The best COIL partnerships have been established between: (1) Mrs Titus and Van Staden of the Faculty of Education at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) and the University Colleges Leuven-Limburg (UCLL), and (2) Eva Haug of the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences and Siyanda Ntlabathi with academics of the University of Fort Hare. Listening to the joyful voices of South African and Dutch students and lecturers reminiscing about their challenging but enriching COIL journey at www.uantwerp.be/impala, and forming a community of 100 SA-EU students on the topic of water, was uplifting. While you are on the website, please dip into the TOOLBOX. You might find some interesting nuggets on internationalisation of the curriculum (IoC), decolonisation, and internationalisation at home (I@H).
iKudu is the brainchild of the Impala community of practice. A team of Impala project stakeholders conceptualised the project. Cornelius Hagenmeier, who involved a team of practitioners and academics in the application-writing journey, coordinated the proposal-writing process. What an enriching journey it was! It resulted in what may be, to the best of my knowledge, the first funded EU Erasmus+ CBHE project coordinated by a South African university. Kudos to the University of the Free State (UFS)!
iKudu was set in motion with its kick-off meeting at the UFS.
Pictured above: Prof Francis Petersen (Rector and Vice-Chancellor of the UFS) and the iKudu consortium.
On Sunday 24 November 2019, a group of iKudu stakeholders with a specific interest in research on our project, met and initiated our first community of practice – a research group. What a significant success! Following this intense discussion, we obtained ethical clearance from the UFS to start research on our project. Varkey George and I have joined the UFS research fellows, whereas Lynette Jacobs joined Jos Beelen as co-coordinator of the iKudu working group 1, which investigates curriculum internationalisation, transformation, and institutional preparedness for COIL through appreciative enquiry. This is how you start a success story!
Develop a community of practice to research it!
The kick-off meeting and welcome reception created the ambience for the next phase of our journey. The talented homegrown UFS band, delicious food, and an executive welcome set the stage. The evening ended with Bernard Smeenk rehearsing, initially tentative, but at the end belting out his wedding song dedicated to his beloved, joined by the soft chorus of the band, which had us tearfully participating in the romance.
The evening ended with a group of us forming a huddle by linking arms and touching heads and Katherine Wimpenny making the profound statement:
"Gosh, we are celebrating our farewell already, and we have (barely) just started our journey."
We have become a community within a day!
The kick-off meeting saw the birth of many communities of practice, including Information Technology, Working Group 1 (curriculum transformation), Working Group 2 (COIL virtual exchange), coordinating team, and research.
A few months into our project, we commenced yet another community of practice. Every week, through ‘Friday Cuppa’, we informally share, advise, grow, and consolidate how this community of practice will grow into a model that can promote a strategy for the decolonisation of the curriculum. It could guide us on working together to promote the spirit of UBUNTU through the four Cs – critical thinking, communication, creativity, but most of all, collaboration.