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RAG has a new
name and format:
ACT—
Active, Civic, Teaching.
The University of the Free State (UFS) is ready to kick off the new year with a bang. Get ready to celebrate the start of university with a cause. RAG, as you know it, has a new name and format: ACT—Active, Civic, Teaching.
You get further if you pull in the same direction, rather than various good-intentioned movements on different routes. In a collective effort, four exciting programmes will take flight, which are listed below:
- Schools project for first-year students: mentored by senior students, groups of first-year students will be assigned to, and participate in local school projects. Students will learn to solve problems and work together in small groups as they collaborate on a specific community project involving primary or secondary schools in the Mangaung region.
- Community gardens: This project will help individual student communities to begin and maintain their own vegetable gardens in order to address food insecurity within their own environment.
- Eco-vehicle project for senior students: The aim of the eco-vehicle project is to create an interdisciplinary experience. Undergraduate senior students from a Student Life College (SLC) can work together to build an eco-vehicle from waste material. The track day, along with creative pit stops, will take place on 16 February 2018, preceding the Community celebration of 17 February 2018.
- Community celebration: To foster good relationships between the UFS and the community, we aim to host an annual celebration that will be open to the broader Mangaung community. The celebrations will kick off on the morning of 17 February 2018 with a business relay and a showcase of the eco-vehicles. The festive day will conclude with an evening music concert.
Keep checking the UFS website for updates about more ACT activities during the month of February.
Laptop in, paper out
2013-07-31
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Prof Pieter Nel gives advice to students.
Photo: Johan Roux
31 July 2013 |
The first major steps to a paperless lecture environment for the School of Medicine were taken in July 2013 with the presentation of laptops to all first-year- medical students.
The aim is to have the entire undergraduate medical programme computer-driven within a few years and to get rid of paper in the classroom.
Prof Pieter Nel, Programme Director: Health Sciences at the school in the Faculty of Health Sciences, said, “As far as we know, this action is the first of its kind in any medical school in South Africa whereby an entire class are supplied with computers for this purpose. We also have no knowledge of anything similar in any programme within any other faculty at any university in South Africa.”
All first-year medical students received laptops. The UFS is facilitating the process to provide students with computer access via their own laptops. “The reason for this is that the undergraduate health-sciences programme will be totally computerised from now on. Students will therefore utilise their laptops in all their contact sessions.”
The entire building where teaching takes place is equipped with Wi-Fi. The students buy the laptops at a much lower cost than the commercial price.
Prof Nel said the printing costs of study material during a student’s undergraduate study years can amount to as much as R5 000.
In future, first-year students will receive laptops, computerising the entire undergraduate health-sciences programme within a few years, Prof Nel said.
During the presentation of the first laptops, Prof Gert van Zyl, Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences, referred to this action as a big step forward in modernising the undergraduate training of medical students in the faculty.