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14 December 2023 | Story Dr Jared McDonald | Photo Supplied
Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Conference
From the left: Dr Eleanor Bernard, Assistant Director in the Centre for Teaching and Learning on the UFS Qwaqwa Campus; Dr Jared McDonald, Chief of Staff in the Office of the Vice-Chancellor and Principal; and Prof Pearl Sithole, Campus Vice-Principal: Academic and Research on the Qwaqwa Campus.

From 21 to 23 November, more than 160 delegates gathered at the Golden Gate Highlands National Park in the Eastern Free State for the fourth biennial conference on Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SOTL) in the South, dubbed SOTL 4 the South.

This year’s iteration was proudly hosted by the University of the Free State (UFS) and organised by Dr Jared McDonald, Chief of Staff in the Office of the Vice-Chancellor and Principal; Dr Eleanor Bernard, Assistant Director in the Centre for Teaching and Learning on the UFS Qwaqwa Campus; and Prof Zach Simpson, Editor-in-Chief of the SOTL in the South journal. Established and emerging scholars, as well as postgraduate students working in the field of teaching and learning from across disciplines in Southern Africa, came together to share ideas, debate perspectives, and learn from experiences related to the conference theme: Teaching and Learning for Sustainable Futures.

The programme included presentations on a wide variety of topics, such as the challenges and opportunities of artificial intelligence in higher education, academic literacy, student success, teaching and learning for sustainable development, curriculum design, and digital futures. The programme also included two keynote presentations by leading scholars in education for sustainability, Prof Heila Lotz-Sisitka, Distinguished Professor and SARChI Research Chair in Global Change and Social Learning Systems in the Environmental Learning Research Centre at Rhodes University, and Prof Kasturi Behari-Leak, Associate Professor of Higher Education Studies and Dean of the University of Cape Town’s Centre for Higher Education Development.

The organisers were delighted with the quality of the scholarship that was shared. “This conference has been 18 months in the making, and we are grateful to all the delegates for embracing, and engaging with, the conference’s theme. We are also appreciative to all the reviewers on the Scientific Review Committee who were generous with their time, reflections, and critiques in assisting us to deliver a compelling, impactful programme,” said Dr McDonald. Dr Bernard added that “the conference would not have been possible without the generous support of the University of the Free State’s Executive Management and Centre for Teaching and Learning, as well as the senior management of the Qwaqwa Campus, who have supported the conference from the time it was just an idea”.

Prof Zach Simpson expressed his gratitude to the UFS for its support and assistance. “The last in-person conference of SOTL in the South was in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic. It was wonderful to see so many scholars come together in a beautiful location to engage with a compelling and topical conference theme.” Selected papers have been invited to contribute to a special issue of SOTL in the South, edited by the organisers and due for publication in mid-2024.

SOTL is an informal ‘body’ that is not affiliated with any particular parent organisation or institution. Its aim is to advance scholarship in teaching and learning across the Global South – conceived of not just in geographic terms – but as concerned with questions of power, access, inequity, and marginalisation, even where these might be present in the Global ‘North’. Moreover, it aims to give voice to novice SOTL practitioners and to serve as a platform for academics, particularly novice academics, to contribute their scholarly work.

News Archive

Central SRC constitution for UFS approved by Council
2005-07-20

University of the Free State Fact Sheet

1. The Council of the University of the Free State (UFS) on 10 June 2005 unanimously approved the establishment of a Central Student Representative Council (CSRC)  to constitute a legitimate basis for the democratic participation of students of all three of its campuses in the governance of the university.

2. In a major breakthrough and transformation step for student governance, the Central SRC will include representatives of the main campus in Bloemfontein, the Vista Bloemfontein campus and the Qwaqwa campus of the UFS.

3. The need to establish the Central SRC follows the incorporation of the Qwaqwa campus into the UFS in January 2003 and the incorporation of the Vista campus in Bloemfontein into the UFS in January 2004.

4. The constitution of the Central SRC is the outcome of a consensus reached during a lengthy process of negotiation between the SRCs of the three UFS campuses, indirectly involving diverse student formations such as Sasco, ANCYL, YCL, Pasma, SASO, SADESMO, AZASCO, SCO, HEREXVII, KovsieAlliance, ACDP, etc. Independent constitutional and political experts facilitated key parts of the negotiation process.

5. In this process, the UFS management went out of its way to ensure the participation of all student formations, especially Sasco and the ANC Youth League, as well as the duly elected SRC officials of the three campuses.

6. With the establishment of a Central SRC, the UFS has adopted a federal student governance model whereby the CSRC is the highest representative student body on matters of common concern for all students. The three campuses of the UFS will retain SRC structures for each campus with powers and responsibilities for matters affecting the particular campus.

7. The central SRC will have 12 members made up of delegates of the different campus SRCs, including the presidents of these three SRCs. In total, the main campus will have 5 representatives, the Qwaqwa campus will have 4 representatives and the Vista campus will have 3 representatives. This ratio ensures a strong voice for the smaller campuses in the central SRC.

8. This arrangement will be reviewed after a year to make allowance for the phasing out of undergraduate (pipeline) students at the Vista campus, as was agreed in the negotiations preceding the incorporation of that campus into the UFS.

9. From these 12 members a central SRC president will be chosen on a quarterly basis to represent the general student body at Executive Management, Senate and Council.

10. The historic official inauguration of the first Central SRC is scheduled to take place in early August 2005.

11. This event, like the adoption of a broadly negotiated new constitution for the main campus SRC, represents a  breakthrough in that all three campus SRCs delegations and all relevant student organizations have been part of the process and have accepted the outcome of the process.

20 July 2005

 

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