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15 October 2020 | Story Leonie Bolleurs | Photo Jolandi Griesel
Dr Michael von Maltitz embraces the possibilities that the internet provides for education. He wants his students to be comfortable evaluating and using information from the internet to solve their problems.
“My research in teaching and learning is driven mostly by curiosity – when I feel something is not working in a class, I look for alternatives and I am quick to adopt something new.”

This is how Dr Michael von Maltitz approaches his research. This perspective on things is also what brought him an award from the Centre for Teaching and Learning (CTL) during the Annual UFS Excellence in Learning and Teaching Conference 2020 that was held on 21 and 22 September 2020. 

Dr Von Maltitz, who is Programme Director and Senior Lecturer in the Department of Mathematical Statistics and Actuarial Science, received an Excellence in Learning and Teaching award in the category Technology Enhanced Learning. 

He teaches Causal Inference and Generalised Linear Models for third-year Mathematical Statistics students, and Sampling Distribution Theory for second-year Mathematical Statistics students. 

Follow the lead of practice

Grabbing the attention of the judges, he believes, was his passion for new teaching and learning methods. He is also of the opinion that it is important to embrace the information – the incredible amount of free, valuable content online – that is freely available to staff and students all the time.

“I am passionate about the fact that we need to stop asking our students to write tests when this is not done in that student’s industry. At university, we need to assess knowledge in the same way it is assessed in practice. This ultimately means that information capturing (which is what we expect from students in a textbook-to-test format) should be left to machines and the internet. Critical thinking, knowledge valuation, and self-assessment (i.e. facets of learning how to learn) should be developed while at university.”

“The internet is everywhere now, and we’re fooling ourselves if we think we can teach our students how to navigate their futures without incorporating the internet into our teachings,” he adds.

Dr Von Maltitz embraces the possibilities that the internet provides. “Hopefully, when my students are finished with my modules, they will be more comfortable evaluating and using information from the internet to solve their problems, like I do on a day-to-day basis,” he says. 

Seeking new methods

On receiving this award, Dr Von Maltitz voiced his gratitude for the opportunity to present his ideas and practices; “it suggests that others might find my work useful”.

He says that it helps him feel justified in trying new methods in teaching and learning every year.

Dr Von Maltitz has big plans for the next five years. He wants to make it to Associate Professor, partially on the strength of his teaching and learning portfolio.

“My goal is to ensure that my gradual exploration of my research field in Mathematical Statistics always raises the impact of my modules for my students and improves the quality and quantity of my postgraduate supervision. I also hope that my teaching and learning research will continue to improve my ability to transform my students into life-long learners.”


News Archive

The failure of the law
2004-06-04

 

Written by Lacea Loader

- Call for the protection of consumers’ and tax payers rights against corporate companies

An expert in commercial law has called for reforms to the Companies Act to protect the rights of consumers and investors.

“Consumers and tax payers are lulled into thinking the law protects them when it definitely does not,” said Prof Dines Gihwala this week during his inaugural lecture at the University of the Free State’s (UFS).

Prof Gihwala, vice-chairperson of the UFS Council, was inaugurated as extraordinary professor in commercial law at the UFS’s Faculty of Law.

He said that consumers, tax payers and shareholders think they can look to the law for an effective curb on the enormous power for ill that big business wields.

“Once the public is involved, the activities of big business must be controlled and regulated. It is the responsibility of the law to oversee and supervise such control and regulation,” said Prof Gihwala.

He said that, when undesirable consequences occur despite laws enacted specifically to prevent such results, it must be fair to suggest that the law has failed.

“The actual perpetrators of the undesirable behaviour seldom pay for it in any sense, not even when criminal conduct is involved. If directors of companies are criminally charged and convicted, the penalty is invariably a fine imposed on the company. So, ironically, it is the money of tax payers that is spent on investigating criminal conduct, formulating charges and ultimately prosecuting the culprits involved in corporate malpractice,” said Prof Gihwala.

According to Prof Gihwala the law continuously fails to hold companies meaningfully accountable to good and honest business values.

“Insider trading is a crime and, although legislation was introduced in 1998 to curb it, not a single successful criminal prosecution has taken place. While the law appears to be offering the public protection against unacceptable business behaviour, it does no such thing – the law cannot act as a deterrent if it is inadequate or not being enforced,” he said.

The government believed it was important to facilitate access to the country’s economic resources by those who had been denied it in the past. The Broad Based Economic Empowerment Act of 2003 (BBEE), is legislation to do just that. “We should be asking ourselves whether it is really possible for an individual, handicapped by the inequities of the past, to compete in the real business world even though the BBEE Act is now part of the law?,” said Prof Gihwala.

Prof Gihwala said that judges prefer to follow precedent instead of taking bold initiative. “Following precedent is safe at a personal level. To do so will elicit no outcry of disapproval and one’s professional reputation is protected. The law needs to evolve and it is the responsibility of the judiciary to see that it happens in an orderly fashion. Courts often take the easy way out, and when the opportunity to be bold and creative presents itself, it is ignored,” he said.

“Perhaps we are expecting too much from the courts. If changes are to be made to the level of protection to the investing public by the law, Parliament must play its proper role. It is desirable for Parliament to be proactive. Those tasked with the responsibility of rewriting our Companies Act should be bold and imaginative. They should remove once and for all those parts of our common law which frustrate the ideals of our Constitution, and in particular those which conflict with the principles of the BBEE Act,” said Prof Gihwala.

According to Prof Gihwala, the following reforms are necessary:

• establishing a unit that is part of the office of the Registrar of Companies to bolster a whole inspectorate in regard to companies’ affairs;
• companies who are liable to pay a fine or fines, should have the right to take action to recover that fine from those responsible for the conduct;
• and serious transgression of the law should allow for imprisonment only – there should be no room for the payment of fines.
 

Prof Gihwala ended the lecture by saying: “If the opportunity to re-work the Companies Act is not grabbed with both hands, we will witness yet another failure in the law. Even more people will come to believe that the law is stupid and that it has made fools of them. And that would be the worst possible news in our developing democracy, where we are struggling to ensure that the Rule of Law prevails and that every one of us has respect for the law”.

 

 

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