Future outlook for the NWU
We have invited all students to return to our campuses. This will be managed in accordance with the relevant government regulations and lockdown levels as the pandemic ensues.
The teaching-learning presentation at the NWU as a contact university will take place in any of the three following modalities:
- face-to-face teaching-learning for small groups (in anticipation of the continued threat of Covid-19 and the need for physical distancing);
- an on-line modality for small groups to allow for optimal participation; and
- lectures being broadcast to large groups, with lecturers who are available online during the broadcasts, facilitating contact where needed.
This combination would ensure that the university provides sufficient opportunities for students to perform as well as possible, while remaining true to our identity as a contact and distance education institution.
An unstable environment
Short-term expectations
We have learned important lessons during Covid-19 and have now reached a point of maturity in our ability to respond to the uncertainties of the pandemic.
Regarding the university’s finances, we are guided by a financial risk mitigation plan that was approved in 2021.
Medium-term expectations
Our focus will be on smaller group teaching and learning
in a student-centred approach. This enables teacher-facilitation
and learning-support intervention, and learning
that is
self-directed, self-paced and collaborative and
cooperative in nature.
Student-centred teaching demonstrates curriculum design that enables facilitation and demonstration more than instruction and transmission, and that can be monitored to identify learning challenges and interventions to support and enhance performance.
Another trend likely to affect teaching and learning at the university is the increasing emphasis in higher education globally on modalities of engagement, as opposed to presence.
Presence entails evidence of being present (signed-on or visibly present, in-person) and may be a requirement for engagement to occur but is not evidence of engagement. This could influence university business in ways which are still opaque.
Long-term expectations
We expect that teaching and learning in the future will be self-paced, self-directed and cooperative, incorporating service learning, work-integrated learning and community engagement.
Using opportunities and addressing challenges and uncertainties
The Covid-19 pandemic represented an educational watershed that has compelled higher education systems to sift the proverbial “wheat from the chaff” in terms of what did and did not work well before, and what has been proven to work better in terms of presence and engagement.
Importantly, these insights are founded in decades of education scholarship but have been foregrounded as a result of the pandemic. Synchronous online (in person in real-time), asynchronous online and offline (for example, activities like reading and self-study), hybrid (the combination of in-person and real-time learning online) and HyFlex are concepts that have come to prominence to further nuance an already long-established scholarship concerning blended or multimodal education.
(HyFlex combines the terms “hybrid” and “flexible”,and refers to learning that integrates complementary face-toface [synchronous] and online learning [asynchronous] experiences. HyFlex allows students to participate in classes online or in-person.)
Considering the substantial challenges experienced in the 2020 and 2021 academic years, which impacted on the university’s ability to engage with existing and prospective students, a series of proactive strategies and support programmes have been set in motion to ensure the student experience in 2022 remains valuable and meaningful.
We have made university-wide intervention plans to support the NWU’s 2022 enrolment targets and are introducing cross-disciplinary stakeholder portfolios. (These portfolios will ensure activities and events address the holistic student experience and also take cognisance of the fact that students still attend a lot of classes online and need to be supported in different ways.)
Our most important targets and plans for the future
In the short- to medium-term
These are our most important objectives in the short- to medium-term:
- Advance student academic access and improve student academic retention and success through excellent student academic support initiatives.
- Engage in a systematic process of curriculum transformation and renewal to equip graduates to address the challenges of 21st century society.
- Establish an enabling teaching and learning environment aligned with the Centre for Teaching and Learning’s and the faculty’s plans.
- Sustain and provide professional services to the community while seeking opportunities to create third-stream income for the university.
- Ensure an NWU qualification mix that is responsive, viable and continuously relevant.
- Enhance the employability of graduates by way of appropriate work-integrated learning and service-learning opportunities.
- Create and maintain a conducive, sustainable environment to advance research, commercialisation and innovation with a strategic focus on internationalisation.
In the long-term
In the long-term, we would like to accomplish the following:
- improve research productivity through research excellence and global leadership,
- create and maintain a conducive, sustainable and supportive environment to advance research excellence, build a pipeline of commercialisable technologies and increase the rate of commercialisation, and strengthen research and innovation with a strategic focus on internationalisation.
In summary
The limitations we experienced during the Covid-19 pandemic made us aware of the inequalities in the availability of resources to which our students had access to. This led to a renewed focus on the university’s student value proposition we offer to our students.
We devoted a substantial amount of time and energy to developing the governance environment within the Student Life portfolio. We created and improved a number of policies, frameworks and rules that enable the university to offer a student experience that is equitable across campuses and comparable to that of other leading universities.
As far as the development and effect of the Covid-19 pandemic is concerned, we are confident that we will be able to move to a more normalised situation in 2022.
We are optimistic that the national vaccination programme and the continued observance of measures to contain the spread of the virus and will allow us to implement an optimally normalised situation as soon as possible.
However, we remain mindful of what might still play out with regard to the pandemic in future, and will ensure our contingency plans are ready to implement, should the pandemic flare up and preventative regulations be enforced again.
