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Statistics lecturer on Qwaqwa campus, Christa Faber bags Master of Higher Education

07 December 2021 | Story Nonsindiso Qwabe

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 researcher fills void in South African policing history

2017-01-02

Currently a Postdoctoral fellow in the International
Studies Group, Dr Cornelis Muller’s PhD thesis explores
late nineteenth century South African policing on the
Witwatersrand.
Photo: Rulanzen Martin

“I used policing on the Witwatersrand as a lens through which to examine aspects relating to state formation within the South African Republic.”

This is how Dr Cornelis Muller, a postdoctoral fellow in the International Studies Group at the University of the Free State (UFS), described his PhD thesis called Policing the Witwatersrand: A history of the South African Republic Police, 1886-1899. The thesis fills an empirical void in the history of settler colonial policing in South Africa.

His research was also featured in the South African Historical Journal, which is published by Routledge. Dr Muller received his PhD from the UFS during the 2016 Winter Graduation ceremonies. He received a scholarship from the university to conduct his three-year research.

Relationship between police and state examined
The study presents itself as an institutional biography in which the relationship between the South African Republic Police (known as the Zarps), the state, and broader society are examined. The period under investigation was a time when political, economic, and social complexities on the Witwatersrand created tension between South Africa and Great Britain.

An important theme throughout the thesis is the relationship between the police, the mining industry, and the so-called Uitlander community. Crime was also an important contributing factor to the complex relationship that developed between the Zarps and the policed in Johannesburg’s formative years.

“Johannesburg was a town under siege by a variety of crimes which ranged from vagrancy, drunkenness, gambling, and prostitution to robbery, murder, and assault,” said Dr Muller.

Archives in South Africa and Great Britain consulted
“My thesis follows a chronological approach in which various themes accounting for the development of the police on the Witwatersrand are highlighted.” Framed within the bureaucratic and administrative functioning of the Zarps, he examined aspects relating to crime, crisis, and conflict between the police and society. The thesis also details the relationship between the police and Johannesburg’s black community.

As with any historical research, it comprised internal and external source criticism and content analyses of a wide range of archival records.

Dr Muller had the opportunity to visit several archives and libraries in South Africa and Great Britain. “Some of the more important archival collections were assessed at the National Archives in Pretoria.” These included the Archive of the State Attorney and the Archive of the Magisterial District of Johannesburg.

“My study thus adds to scholarship that seeks to provide a more nuanced understanding of the South African Republic’s administrative functioning and internal politics in the late nineteenth century,” concluded Dr Muller.

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