In the first completely virtual excursions, about 2 500 first-year BEd students from the Faculty of Education had the opportunity to engage and further develop their skills as effective facilitators by participating in one of 13 virtual excursions, each lasting two days.
The Faculty of Health Sciences and the Faculty of Law also launched their pilot projects this year, with 300 first-year students from each faculty participating in virtual excursions. (Click on the tabs/links to the left of this section to read more about their activities.)
The virtual excursions took place from 16 August to 28 September. According to Prof Josef de Beer, one of the organisers and a research professor in the Research Unit for Self-Directed Learning (SDL) in the Faculty of Education, the excursions were a resounding success.
“I believe we succeeded in setting the table for self-directed learning by using online learning and cooperative and problem-based learning principles,” he says.
capture students’ imaginations
VIRTUAL EXCURSIONS
The new normal during the Covid-19 pandemic has necessitated things having to be done differently.
Look no further than the NWU’s novel approach towards its popular excursions. To ensure students do not miss out on these due to Covid-19 restrictions, the university is taking students on virtual outings.
Prof Neal Petersen (left) and Prof Josef de Beer in the “green room” of the studio, providing live feedback to students during the virtual excursions.
Solve problems
Real-life scenario
Creative thinking
Education students solve school’s problems
Josef says the Faculty of Education built their virtual excursions around a problem that students had to solve.
The facilitators showed the students a video diary of a newly appointed school principal of an imaginary school that could be described as dysfunctional, as it faced many problems. Students then had to brainstorm possible solutions to these problems.
In this way, they saw for themselves how complex the teaching profession is and gained hands-on experience of self-directed learning, including how to formulate their own learning goals for professional development.
Josef says 85% of all the students who participated rated the excursions between 8 and 10 on a scale of 1 to 10 (with “10” being excellent).
Law students learn through a real-life scenario
The virtual excursion of the Faculty of Law was centred around the theme of social justice and diversity.
According to Adv René Koraan, one of the organisers, they managed to compile a very exciting interactive programme for the students. “The ice-breaker session exposed them to a real-life factual scenario that required self-directed learning.”
René says students worked in groups and could interact with the presenters in live question-and-answer sessions.
“I think we achieved one of the most important goals of the virtual excursions – to create a safe space where students could learn, interact, grow and be empowered.”
In the Faculty of Law’s interactive presentations, students engaged with each other and learnt through multimedia and real-life scenarios.
Law students learned about the Core Values Index Key, among other things.
Health students design their “Health Hero”
Students from the Faculty of Health Sciences could reflect on the characteristics, values and behaviours of responsible and responsive health professionals in South Africa.
Rhea Koch, instructional designer, says they used the online platform Thinglink to create different scenarios of health and medical professionals interacting with each other and with patients.
First-year students had to complete consecutive virtual challenges individually. They followed these tasks with interprofessional teamwork, where they had to design and present their own Health Hero on the basis of the input from all the team members.
Students from the Faculty of Health Sciences put on their creative hats to come up with their own superhero storyboard.
x
Click here to read the full article.
Click on the links below to read more about the faculties' activities.
