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Education students present research at Faculty’s Annual Postgraduate Research Conference

23 October 2023 | Story André Damons | Photo Rosina Mothiba

“Exploring Grade 12 learners’ substance abuse and its influence on their academic performance”, “The role of the School Management Team in addressing Homophobic Bullying in Xhariep public schools” and “Exploring the use of YouTube videos in the teaching and learning of fractions in Grade 4.”

These were some of the interesting research titles that were presented at this year’s University of the Free State’s (UFS) Faculty of Education Annual Postgraduate Research Conference. The two-day conference, now in its fifth year, took place from 6-7 October with the theme “Changing the Educational Landscape in Africa through ongoing research”. The conference is one of the faculty’s main events supporting its postgraduate students and ensuring time for completion for each one of them.

A total of 145 postgraduate students and 55 staff members attended the conference where the faculty’s postgraduate students get exposure to present their research in front of an academic audience.

Prof Loyiso Jita, the Dean of the Faculty of Education, delivered the keynote address and spoke at length about the graduation rates of master’s and doctoral students in the faculty. He challenged the presenters to hold themselves and each other accountable for progression in their studies and to produce high-quality research that will position them and the university in good stead nationally and internationally.

New teaching approach

In the study “Exploring the use of YouTube videos in the teaching and learning of fractions in Grade 4”, MB Tsoaela (PhD student), explores the teaching and learning of fractions using YouTube videos in Grade 4. In trying to answer the main research question, “How do Grade 4 educators teach fractions utilising YouTube videos?” The researcher states that: “The use of YouTube videos is a very new way of learning in the South African context. This new teaching approach has proven to be exciting for young learners in Grade 4 because it has many options like animations, colourful videos, and pictures. Even though YouTube learning is exciting and fun, its implementation has challenges such as teachers wanting to use a chalkboard. Another challenge is the current load shedding.”

Psychosocial implications of school violence

Another PhD student, MDL Stack, investigated how to design an assessment for Higher Education that ChatGPT is unable to provide an answer that will pass without human intervention in his research paper titled “Investigating an assessment design that prevents students from using ChatGPT as the sole basis to pass assessment in Higher Education at undergraduate level”. He argued that “ChatGPT has presented significant challenges to lecturers when they set assessments at tertiary level.

“There is enormous potential for students to attempt to use ChatGPT to write and pass assessments designed at undergraduate level,” the researcher writes.

Another research paper looked at the psychosocial implications of school violence on teachers in Motheo District public schools in the Free State, arguing that school violence against teachers continues to be a phenomenon that is increasingly disturbing, while having serious implications on South African and global societies. Many teachers suffer social and psychological stress but not much has been done to understand learner-induced violence against teachers.

Exposure for students

Prof Matseliso Mokhele-Makgalwa, the acting Vice-Dean Research and Postgraduate Studies, says the purpose of the conference is to give exposure to master’s and PhD students to present their work in front of an academic audience (staff and students) as well as for them to get comments and feedback from experts and fellow students on their on-going research studies.

“The conference is about sharing the ongoing research being done by our master’s and doctoral students and/or reporting on their preliminary and final outcomes of the students who are about to graduate. By presenting their work, they disseminate key findings, build relations with other students and staff, and create inter- and multi-disciplinary networks for future collaborations,” says Mokhele-Makgalwa.

News Archive

Multi-disciplinary research approach at UFS

2005-10-25

UFS follows multi-disciplinary research approach with opening of new centre

“A new way of doing business in necessary in the research and teaching of agriculture and natural sciences in South Africa. We must move away from departmentalised research infrastructures and a multi-disciplinary approach to research involving several disciplines must be adapted,” said Prof Herman van Schalkwyk, Dean: Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences at the University of the Free State (UFS).

Prof van Schalkwyk delivered the keynote address during the launch of the Centre for Plant Health Management (CePHMa) at the Main Campus in Bloemfontein today (21 October 2005). CePHMa is an initiative of the UFS Department of Plant Sciences.

According to Prof van Schalkwyk a tertiary institution must practice multi-disciplinary research to be a world-class research institution. “It is difficult for researchers to admit that they do not know a lot about each other’s area of speciality. It is therefore necessary for researchers to make a paradigm shift and to focus on inter-disciplinary co-operation. To do this, we must encourage them to work together and to find a common language to communicate ideas en establish symbiotic relationships,” said Prof Van Schalkwyk.

“We tend to think that research is better and faster if it is specialised. This is not true. The new generation of scientists are young and they are trained to form a concept of the total system and not to focus on a specific area of speciality. At the UFS we encourage this approach to research. This was one of the main reasons for the establishment of CePHMa,” said Prof Van Schalkwyk.
CePHMa is the only centre of its kind in Africa and is established to extend the expertise in plant health management in South Africa and in Africa, to train experts in plant health and to conduct multi-disciplinary research about the health of agricultural crops.

“CePHMa is a virtual centre comprising of ten disciplines applicable to crop production and crop protection,” said Prof Wijnand Swart, Chairperson of CePHMa during the opening ceremony.

“The UFS is the leading institution in Africa in terms of news crop development and manages three research programmes that concentrate on new crops, i.e. the New Crop Pathology Programme, the New Crop Development Programme and the Insects on New Crops Programme. Other applied research programmes that are unique to the UFS are genetic resistance to rust diseases of small grain crops and sustainable integrated disease management of field crops,” said Prof Swart.

“Because the expected growth in population will be 80% in 2020 in sub-Saharan Africa, the future demands of food produce in Africa will be influenced. Therefore research will in future be focused on ways to improve food security by employing agricultural systems that are economically viable and environmentally sound,” said Prof Swart.

“Thorough knowledge of the concept of holistic plant health management is crucial to meet the challenge and it is therefore imperative that innovative crop protection and crop production strategies, with particular emphasis on plant health, be adopted. This is why the Department of Plant Sciences initiated the establishment of CePHMA,” he said.

According to Prof Swart there is a shortage of expertise in plant health management. “The UFS has shown the potential to address the demand of the sub-continent of Africa regarding expertise training and CePHMa is the leader in southern Africa to provide in this need,” he said.

The appropriateness and quality of training in plant health management is reflected in the fact that students from Ethiopia, Eritrea, Malawi, Uganda, Zambia, Ghana, Tanzania, Cameroon, Angola, Mozambique and Lesotho have already been trained or are in the process of being trained in at the UFS.

Scientists from CePHMa have forged partnerships with numerous national and international institutions including the Agricultural Research Council (ARC), various community trusts, seed, pesticide and agricultural chemical companies, in addition to overseas universities.

Media release
Issued by: Lacea Loader
Media Representative
Tel: (051) 401-2584
Cell: 083 645 2454
E-mail: loaderl.stg@mail.uovs.ac.za
21 October 2005

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