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07 December 2021 | Story Nonsindiso Qwabe
Christa Faber
Innovative Methods in Assessment Practices award winner for the Qwaqwa Campus, Christa Faber.

By working with students and being part of their development into successful young adults, Mathematics and Applied Mathematics Lecturer on the Qwaqwa Campus, Christa Faber, soon realised that she would like to proceed with her own studies, and she set her sights on just that. Obtaining her honours degree in Mathematical Statistics at age 40 inspired Faber to continue pursuing an education. She will be receiving her Master of Higher Education Studies degree during the December graduations.

Teaching has always been her passion, Faber shared fondly. She commenced her teaching career as a Mathematics teacher in a small town, Molteno, in the Eastern Cape. After four years of teaching, she worked as a Mathematics supply teacher in the United Kingdom for two years. Upon her return, she continued her teaching career in Harrismith, where she was appointed as a Science teacher at Harrismith High School, before receiving an offer to assist the UFS Qwaqwa Campus as a Statistics facilitator in 2003. She never looked back.

As a researcher, Faber has spent the past eight years using technology as an educational tool to determine whether it can be used to improve students’ performance and understanding of basic statistics. “I believe students learn best when they expect to be successful and see the value of the course for their personal development,” she said.

Faber conducted an experiment on how an online assessment tool (OAT) could be incorporated into the Statistics module to enhance student engagement, and consequently, the performance of students in a rural setting. The transition from face-to-face teaching to online learning has been a topic across all institutions of higher learning, with students’ response to learning on blended platforms being of great importance.

The learning experiment, conducted pre-COVID, showed the benefits that online assessment tools could have on the performance and engagement of students at a rural university. Faber said she considers it important to know how students engaged in key online and general learning practices as a way of managing and developing rural university education. For the experiment, a pragmatic parallel mixed methods design was used to divide students into two groups to compare the performances of those with online assessment tool interventions and those without.

The intervention recently won Faber the Innovative Methods in Assessment Practices award for the Qwaqwa Campus at this year’s Centre for Teaching and Learning awards. The purpose of the category was to showcase how assessment strategies, tools, and assessment activities are used to assess students in new, original, or inventive ways. She said she was grateful to receive recognition for a research project inspired by her passion for teaching and learning, combined with the use of online assessment technology, to enhance students’ learning experience in the field of statistics. “My ongoing research supports the promotion of student engagement in statistics education, as well as in the general educational field.”

News Archive

UFS serious about safe campuses
2011-02-09

Mr Willie Frankim, Head of Protection Services at the UFS, in the new control room on the Main Campus.
Photo: Dries Myburgh

The University of the Free State (UFS) officially launched its security control room recently. This new addition to the university's infrastructure, which was implemented in December 2010, has already made a contribution to the combating of crime at the UFS.

The decrease in crime statistics for January this year (5 cases), in comparison to the statistics of January 2010 (51 cases) is proof that the UFS’s new approach to combating crime on campus has an impact.
 
According to Prof. Niel Viljoen, Vice-Rector: Operations, the safety of students, lecturers and staff of the UFS is of the utmost importancet. For this reason, it is continuously reflected on about what can be done to improve the levels of safety for the respective campuses.
 
Apart from the upgraded security control room, from where, amongst others, residences, pedestrian routes, campus buildings, parking areas, entrances at gates and computer rooms at residences are observed, a number of measures have been set in place to improve the task of combating crime.
 
These measures include:
-       Security cameras in front of all the women’s residences. The UFS is in the process of also installing
        security cameras in front of the men’s residences.
-       Shrubs and trees that caused obstruction in front of cameras have been pruned.
-       Security officers patrol the pedestrian routes as well as the Red Square on foot from 06:00-22:00.
-       A security officer has been appointed at each residence to be on duty from 18:00 to 06:00
        at the residence.
-       Two vehicles patrol the Main Campus on a 24-hour basis.
-       The UFS is in die process to install alarms, which will be linked to the central security control room, 
        in all buildings.
-       In certain buildings panic buttons have been installed in strategic places.
-       Where possible, better entrance control to building, especially office blocks, has been implemented.
-       Better management and integration of the security workers who are contracted from outside.
        More security workers have also been appointed to do duty at each residence as well as on the
        pedestrian routes (during the hours indicated).
-       A survey has once again been done of all “dark spots” on the campus and better lighting is 
        currently being installed.
 
The reduced reaction times are a direct result of the operational process between security staff in the control room with met security staff that patrols the campus on foot and by vehicle


Media Release
09 February 2011
Issued by: Lacea Loader
Director: Strategic Communication (actg)
Tel: 051 401 2584
Cell: 083 645 2454
E-mail: news@ufs.ac.za

 

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