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Prof Lizette de Wet, pioneer in the field of Human Computer Interaction

10 February 2021 | Story Leonie Bolleurs | Photo Stephen Collett

“I consider obtaining my PhD while balancing my work, my marriage, and two young daughters (who did not sleep through before reaching age four!) as one of my biggest achievements,” says Prof Lizette de Wet, Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Informatics at the University of the Free State (UFS).

Many firsts

Her achievements in the field include much more than the PhD referred to. On 11 February, International Day of Women and Girls in Science, the UFS celebrates her for pioneering the human-computer interaction (HCI) research environment, specifically the evaluation of usability and user experience in diverse application areas, where she has experienced and established many firsts.

Prof De Wet was one of the first students to complete a master’s degree in this discipline at UNISA (1994). She says the external examiner for her master’s was from the University of York in the UK, as expertise in South Africa was still lacking at the time.

In the Department of Computer Science and Informatics at the UFS, she established the HCI research area. This involved undertaking research projects in the discipline and developing curricula for a second-year module, an honours module, and a master’s module.

“The second-year module was also one of two modules on campus to first use iPads in class to assist in a blended learning approach,” she says.

Taking the human being into consideration is much more important than simply concentrating on the programming code that needs to be written.– Prof Lizette de Wet

A woman’s contribution

Prof De Wet believes that in the research field of HCI, the focus is on the user and his/her overall user experience (including emotions, feelings, and competence) when using computers. “Taking the human being into consideration is much more important than simply concentrating on the programming code that needs to be written.”

Whether the human being writing the code is male or female, does not matter. Prof De Wet is of the opinion that there is no gender distinction between what women and men could achieve in the field of Computer Science and Informatics.

“Although the students are still predominantly male, in the past few years more and more female students have enrolled for our postgraduate studies and completed it successfully, some of them with exceptional marks. In South-Africa, many women are making their mark in this discipline by being heads of departments at universities or in the private sector, by chairing national and international conferences, and by publishing ground-breaking research,” she adds.

Success with virtual reality

Over the past few years, Prof De Wet has concentrated on using brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) and virtual reality in her research. By the end of 2020, she had successfully supervised 11 master’s students and four PhD students, with one of the master’s students delivering ground-breaking research using virtual reality in the training of nursing students.

She elaborates: “The prototype involved virtually examining and evaluating a patient (with a foreign object lodged in a lung) in a virtual ward while wearing an Oculus Rift headset. The evaluation results were extremely positive and will be continued as a PhD study to investigate how to attempt to relieve motion sickness in an immersive virtual clinical simulation.”

Starting out as someone who never had the opportunity to lay her eyes on a computer during her school years, Prof De Wet is of the opinion that in South Africa – being a Third World country – there are numerous opportunities to make computers accessible to rural communities, and even to the large senior population who did not grow up with technology and might fear it.

With her passion for the profession, she not only delivers pioneering work, but also trains professionals in computer sciences who will contribute to a better tomorrow.

News Archive

Weideman focuses on misconceptions with regard to survival of Afrikaans

2006-05-19

From the left are Prof Magda Fourie (Vice-Rector: Academic Planning), Prof Gerhardt de Klerk (Dean: Faculty of the Humanities), George Weideman and Prof Bernard Odendaal (acting head of the UFS Department of Afrikaans and Dutch, German and French).
Photo (Stephen Collett):

Weideman focuses on misconceptions with regard to survival of Afrikaans

On the survival of a language a persistent and widespread misconception exists that a “language will survive as long as people speak the language”. This argument ignores the higher functions of a language and leaves no room for the personal and historic meaning of a language, said the writer George Weideman.

He delivered the D.F. Malherbe Memorial Lecture organised by the Department Afrikaans at the University of the Free State (UFS). Dr. Weideman is a retired lecturer and now full-time writer. In his lecture on the writer’s role and responsibility with regard to language, he also focused on the language debate at the University of Stellenbosch (US).

He said the “as-long-as-it-is spoken” misconception ignores the characteristics and growth of literature and other cultural phenomena. Constitutional protection is also not a guarantee. It will not stop a language of being reduced to a colloquial language in which the non-standard form will be elevated to the norm. A language only grows when it standard form is enriched by non-standard forms; not when its standard form withers. The growth or deterioration of a language is seen in the growth or decline in its use in higher functions. The less functions a language has, the smaller its chance to survive.

He said Afrikaans speaking people are credulous and have misplaced trust. It shows in their uncritical attitude with regard to the shifts in university policies, university management and teaching practices. Afrikaners have this credulity perhaps because they were spoilt by white supremacy, or because the political liberation process did not free them from a naïve and slavish trust in government.

If we accept that a university is a kind of barometer for the position of a language, then the institutionalised second placing of Afrikaans at most tertiary institutions is not a good sign for the language, he said.

An additional problem is the multiplying effect with, for instance, education students. If there is no need for Afrikaans in schools, there will also be no need for Afrikaans at universities, and visa versa.

The tolerance factor of Afrikaans speaking people is for some reasons remarkably high with regard to other languages – and more specifically English. With many Afrikaans speaking people in the post-apartheid era it can be ascribed to their guilt about Afrikaans. With some coloured and mostly black Afrikaans speaking people it can be ascribed to the continued rejection of Afrikaans because of its negative connotation with apartheid – even when Afrikaans is the home language of a large segment of the previously oppressed population.

He said no one disputes the fact that universities play a changing role in a transformed society. The principle of “friendliness” towards other languages does not apply the other way round. It is general knowledge that Afrikaans is, besides isiZulu and isiXhosa, the language most spoken by South Africans.

It is typical of an imperialistic approach that the campaigners for a language will be accused of emotional involvement, of sentimentality, of longing for bygone days, of an unwillingness to focus on the future, he said.

He said whoever ignores the emotional aspect of a language, knows nothing about a language. To ignore the emotional connection with a language, leads to another misconception: That the world will be a better place without conflict if the so-called “small languages” disappear because “nationalism” and “language nationalism” often move closely together. This is one of the main reasons why Afrikaans speaking people are still very passive with regard to the Anglicising process: They are not “immune” to the broad influence that promotes English.

It is left to those who use Afrikaans to fight for the language. This must not take place in isolation. Writers and publishers must find more ways to promote Afrikaans.

Some universities took the road to Anglicision: the US and University of Pretoria need to be referred to, while there is still a future for Afrikaans at the Northwest University and the UFS with its parallel-medium policies. Continued debate is necessary.

It is unpreventable that the protest over what is happening to Afrikaans and the broad Afrikaans speaking community must take on a stronger form, he said.

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