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One-room magic: UFS' immersive classrooms redefine learning

29 August 2025 | Story Igno van Niekerk | Photo Stephen Collett

The university is transforming education across its Bloemfontein, Qwaqwa, and South campuses with its pioneering one-room spaces, mirrored across all three locations to deliver cutting-edge, immersive learning. Research for these innovative spaces began in 2023, sparked by a photo from the University of Leuven in Belgium, which the university identified as showcasing Leuven’s advanced classroom setup. Prof Philippe Burger, Dean of the Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences, leveraging a connection there, led a team to explore this technology globally, collaborating with Canada’s X2O OneRoom to make the UFS the first in South Africa – and one of (as far as we know) two in Africa, alongside Kenya – to offer such immersive classrooms.

Unlike Zoom or Blackboard, where online students were often overlooked as small icons, one-room spaces ensure that everyone feels included. Designed for postgraduate training and PhD interactions, these rooms accommodate up to 40 in-person and 40 online participants, with large video camera feeds on screens, reminiscent of the TV programme Small Talk, where children’s faces lined the wall for engagement. Directional audio and personal cameras create a sensory experience, with sound coming from the speaker’s direction and eye contact feeling natural. Angelique Carson-Porter from the Department of Nutrition and Dietetics shared her excitement about a postgraduate session led by Prof Aletta Olivier, Lecturer in the Centre for Gender and Africa Studies: “It feels like you’re right there, even from Pretoria or Ghana. You see everyone, interact, and never miss a beat.”

Gavin Coetzer at ICT Services, a key project leader, highlighted how lecturers struggled with older platforms’ limitations, often only addressing online questions at the end, disrupting the flow. The UFS’ one-room spaces, implemented in the UFS Business School, the Clinical Skills Unit, South Campus teacher training, and Qwaqwa, solve this with breakout sessions and global conference support. While other universities rely on Teams, the UFS’ user-friendly tech, with around 24 screens and ceiling microphones, allows lecturers to focus on teaching.

Staying ahead of tech trends is challenging, but the university is excelling, making education inclusive, engaging, and truly global.

News Archive

Tim Noakes delivers lecture at UFS symposium

2014-08-04

Prof Tim Noakes
Photo: Renè-Jean van der Berg

The Metabolic Research Unit at the University of the Free State (UFS) held a symposium on diabetes, with Prof Tim Noakes as one of the guest speakers.

Prof Noakes, a professor in Sports Medicine at the University of Cape Town, became known mainly for his research and findings on nutrition and health and is also the person behind the infamous ‘Noakes diet’.

The ‘Noakes diet’ – or the Paleo diet – focuses on avoiding carbohydrates in favour of including high fat and oil content for a healthy diet.

During his lecture, Prof Noakes explained how this diet can actually help control certain stadia of diabetes and shared several success stories with the symposium.

Prof Noakes’ reasoning concerning the ‘traditional’ nutritional requirements known to everybody, is that it has never been studied before to determine its effectiveness.

According to this nutritional plan, often depicted as a food pyramid, carbohydrates should form the biggest part of a healthy diet and foods from the fats and oils group should be restricted.

Prof Noakes explained that the human body converts carbohydrates into glucose (sugar) to be able to digest it. It is this sugar that leads to weight and health problems in people, of which heart disease and diabetes are some of the most common.

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