Student-generated content: an approach to harnessing the power of diversity in higher education
- Authors: Snowball, Jeanette D , McKenna, Sioux
- Date: 2017
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/66763 , vital:28991 , ISSN 1470-1294 , https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2016.1273205
- Description: Publisher version , Internationally, classes in higher education institutions are becoming larger and more diverse. Support for ‘non-traditional’ students has often taken the form of additional remedial classes offered outside the main curriculum, which has met with limited success. Sociocultural theories of learning argue that the potential clash between the sociocultural context of disciplinary knowledge and the very different home contexts of many non-traditional students needs to be acknowledged. One way to achieve this is to use student-generated content, which allows teachers to bring student experiences and voices into the community of practice and acknowledges the importance of their prior experiences in knowledge production. Building on such sociocultural approaches to teaching and learning, this paper focuses on the use of student-generated podcasts as a means to harness the diversity of student experiences in a large (nearly 600 students) first-year Economics class at a South African University.
- Full Text: false
- Date Issued: 2017
Towards a framework for assessing the sustainability of local economic development based on natural resources: honeybush tea in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa
- Authors: Polak, James S , Snowball, Jeanette D
- Date: 2017
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/69201 , vital:29445 , https://doi.org/10.1080/13549839.2016.1196348
- Description: Despite the popularity of local economic development (LED) as a job creation and economic growth strategy in South Africa, many LED projects have not proved to be sustainable in the long-run, especially where human systems interact with biological ones. This article examines the relationship between sustainability and LED within the context of the emerging honeybush tea industry in the Eastern Cape. Data were gathered from provincial as well as local government policy documents and reports, and via key informant interviews. The data were analysed using Connelly’s [(2007). Mapping sustainable development as a contested concept. Local Environment, 12 (3), 259–278] three pronged approach to sustainable development as a lens through which to view the local industry. Findings showed that the industry offers many opportunities for development, including job creation in poorer, rural households; sustainable wild harvesting using a permit system; commercial cultivation; potential to develop social capital; potential for community-based LED; and product diversification. However, there are also corresponding challenges: There is currently no reliable data on the maximum sustainable yield, which is needed to guide quota allocations for entrepreneurial harvesters harvesting from wild stocks; possible biodiversity loss; and enforcing the permit scheme is proving difficult in remote rural areas.
- Full Text: false
- Date Issued: 2017
Employment and diversity in the cultural and creative industries in South Africa: research note
- Authors: Snowball, Jeanette D
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/71493 , vital:29858 , https://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC188591
- Description: The publication of Richard Florida's (2002) The Rise of the Creative Class marked a growing international interest in the creative economy. There are several ways of understanding the creative economy, often divided into the cultural and creative industries. Cultural industries are those whose major outputs have some symbolic value, such as fine arts, film and craft, jewelry design, publishing and fashion. Creative industries are defined more broadly as those that have knowledge as their major input. In addition to cultural goods and services, these include things like software design and internet services. UNESCO (2009) provides guidelines for defining the cultural and creative industries and the ways in which they can be measured, but there is currently no international consensus. Nor is there likely to be, since different countries will have very different levels of involvement and focus that may shape what information is useful, for example, for shaping policy.
- Full Text: false
- Date Issued: 2016
Film production incentives, employment transformation and domestic expenditure in South Africa: visualizing subsidy effectiveness
- Authors: Collins, Alan , Ishizaka, Alessio , Snowball, Jeanette D
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/67456 , vital:29094 , https://doi.org/10.1080/10286632.2016.1255206
- Description: Publisher version , In 2004 the South African Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) introduced a Film and Television Production Rebate Programme. In order to qualify for the rebate, certain criteria have to be met including success in job creation and skills development within the industry, alongside a particular focus on the percentage of ‘historically disadvantaged individuals’ employed. This study sets out the issues associated with evaluating success in meeting these various criteria and is, to the best of our knowledge, the first study to apply multi-criteria visualization techniques to inform the evaluation of public subsidy effectiveness. The ‘PROMETHEE’ method is applied and apart from presenting project performance in a visually intuitive manner, the approach helps to clarify patterns of relative success, show where policy objectives are competing, and to identify project exemplars for more efficiently guiding future public support in the sector.
- Full Text: false
- Date Issued: 2016
Water footprint assessment of citrus production in South Africa: A case study of the Lower Sundays River Valley
- Authors: Munro, Samantha A , Fraser, Gavin C G , Snowball, Jeanette D , Pahlow, Markus
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/69240 , vital:29463 , https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2016.06.142
- Description: Water footprint assessment is a developing method that is being increasingly applied to quantify water use, prioritise reductions, assess sustainability and provide information to achieve sustainable, efficient, and equitable water use. The objectives of this paper were to conduct a water footprint assessment of primary citrus production within the Lower Sundays River Valley in South Africa using local, high-resolution data and to examine indicators (water scarcity, pollution, efficiency, productivity and access) to determine the sustainability of blue, green and grey water footprints of a wet, dry and average year. Lemons were found to have the lowest blue and combined green-blue water footprint per ton of production across all climatic years, followed by soft citrus, valencias and navels. Valencias had the lowest, and navels the highest grey WF (relating to inorganic nitrogen). Lemons, despite their high crop water and fertiliser requirements, were regarded more economically efficient in comparison to valencias, soft citrus and navels, in that they provided higher net income and more employment hours per m3 of water in comparison to other citrus crops. In an average season, lemons generated approximately 39% more income per m3 of water than navels, despite navels being the dominant cultivar. Blue water consumption for citrus in the catchment was calculated to be 58.7 Mm3 for an average season and 89.2 Mm3 for a dry season. Due to an inter-basin transfer scheme, no physical water scarcity occurred, and both environmental and basic human needs are met. Water pollution levels related to nitrogen however, exceeded the assimilative capacity of the run-off in dry years. The area also experiences institutional and infrastructural scarcity and 14% of the population do not have access to piped water. Stakeholders and governments may use the results of water footprint assessments to determine the status of river basins, make evaluations for future water usage and the potential impacts of expanding agriculture and different management strategies. Including environmental and socio-economic indicators will also improve the integrity of water footprint assessments.
- Full Text: false
- Date Issued: 2016
Determinants of student satisfaction with campus residence life at a South African university
- Authors: Botha, Ferdi , Snowball, Jeanette D , De Klerk, Vivian A , Radloff, Sarah E
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , book
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/69277 , vital:29475 , https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-15904-1_2
- Description: Factors outside the classroom can contribute to academic success as well as the achievement of important outcomes such as the appreciation of human diversity. Striving towards equality of residence life satisfaction is thus important for academic outcomes and for the development of well-functioning citizens. This study is based on the 2011 Quality of Residence Life (QoRL) Survey, conducted at a South African university, comprising roughly 2,000 respondents. The study investigates the association between satisfaction with QoRL and (i) residence milieu and characteristics, (ii) direct and indirect discrimination, (iii) perceptions of drug and alcohol issues in residence, (iv) safety, and (v) individual student characteristics. One main finding is that there are no significant differences in satisfaction with QoRL across racial and gender groups; suggesting significant progress in university transformation and equity goals. The general atmosphere and characteristics of residences are also important predictors of QoRL satisfaction.
- Full Text: false
- Date Issued: 2015
Regulatory incoherence and economic potential of freshwater recreational fisheries: the trout triangle in South Africa
- Authors: Marire, Juniours , Snowball, Jeanette D , Fraser, Gavin C G
- Date: 2014
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/68621 , vital:29295 , https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.2753/JEI0021-3624480406
- Description: Publisher version , We apply John R. Commons’s negotiational psychology, specifically his principle of sovereignty, to the development of a discordant regulatory culture and its likely impact on the economic potential of recreational fishing. Using South African environmental judicial precedents and other documentation, we formulate six plausible hypotheses. We argue that regulatory incoherence, entitlement insecurity, corporate-dominated social valuation, strategic power coalitions, lack of procedural fairness, and the extent of judicial enforcement of environmental rights help explain the economic potential and isolation of the freshwater recreational fisheries sector. We find a consistent pattern of extraction and monopolization of sovereign power by the Department of Mineral Resources from propertied parties. Thus, regulatory domination is a major mechanism affecting the economic potential of recreational fisheries in the Trout Triangle. While Commons postulated that private property is a sufficient condition for participation in the determination and use of sovereign power, we argue that private/public property is only a necessary condition. The conjunctive sufficient condition is the existence of both regulatory coherence between spheres of government and property.
- Full Text: false
- Date Issued: 2014
Dancing with the devil: formative peer assessment and academic performance
- Authors: Mostert, Markus , Snowball, Jeanette D
- Date: 2013
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/69301 , vital:29483 , https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2012.705262
- Description: Peer assessment can be important in developing active and independent learners, as well as providing more and faster feedback in large classes, compared to marking done by tutors. In addition, the evaluative, critical stance required by students in order to assess their peers' work encourages the development of higher-order cognitive skills. Changing roles from being assessed to being an assessor can also improve students' ability to judge and improve on their own work. However, peer assessment does have potential problems and there is some debate as to the appropriate academic level at which to implement it, the kinds of feedback that are given and the ways in which students respond. In addition, there is little evidence that peer assessment has an impact on academic performance. This research reports the results of an online peer assessment exercise for a macroeconomics essay conducted in a large Economics 1 class at Rhodes University. Of the 800 students, about half participated in the peer assessment exercise. Data were collected from students via a formal course evaluation. In addition, a sample of 50 essays was evaluated in terms of the relationship between peer marks and final (tutor) marks received and the impact that peer assessment had on the quality of the final essay submitted. An Ordinary Least Squares regression was used to investigate the impact of peer assessment participation on marks. Results showed that peer marks tended to ‘bunch’ in the 60–68% range, indicating the reluctance of peers to give very high or low marks. In general, peers gave more useful feedback on technical aspects, such as presentation and referencing (which were also the categories in which students most often made improvements), than on content. Regression analysis showed that peer assessment participation was not a significant determinant of final essay mark, but that economics ability and English language proficiency were.
- Full Text: false
- Date Issued: 2013
Determinants of life satisfaction among race groups in South Africa
- Authors: Ebrahim, Amina , Botha, Ferdi , Snowball, Jeanette D
- Date: 2013
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/69311 , vital:29497 , https://doi.org/10.1080/0376835x.2013.797227
- Description: Economic indicators, like gross domestic product per capita, are commonly used as indicators of welfare. However, they have a very limited and narrow scope, excluding many potentially important welfare determinants, such as health, relative income and religion – not surprising since they were not designed to fill this role. As a result, there is growing acceptance, and use of, subjective measures of well-being (called ‘happiness’ or ‘life satisfaction’, often used interchangeably) both worldwide and in South Africa. Happiness economics does not propose to replace income-based measures of well-being, but rather attempts to complement them with broader measures, which can be important in making policy decisions that optimise societal welfare. This paper tests for differences in subjective well-being between race groups in South Africa, and investigates the determinants of self-rated life satisfaction for each group. Using the 2008 National Income Dynamics Study data, descriptive methods (analysis of variance) and an ordered probit model are applied. Results indicate that reported life satisfaction differs substantially among race groups, with black South Africans being the least satisfied group despite changes since the advent of democracy in 1994. Higher levels of educational attainment increased satisfaction for the whole sample, and women (particularly black women) are generally less satisfied than men. As found in many other studies, unemployed people have lower levels of life satisfaction than the employed, even when controlling for income and relative income. The determinants of life satisfaction are also different for each race group: white South Africans attach greater importance to physical health, whereas employment status and absolute income matter greatly for black people. For coloured people and black people, positional status (as measured by relative income) is an important determinant of well-being, with religious involvement contributing significantly to the well-being of Indian people.
- Full Text: false
- Date Issued: 2013
Where angels fear to tread: online peer-assessment in a large first-year class
- Authors: Mostert, Markus , Snowball, Jeanette D
- Date: 2013
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/68845 , vital:29330 , https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2012.683770
- Description: Publisher version , In the context of widening participation, large classes and increased diversity, assessment of student learning is becoming increasingly problematic in that providing formative feedback aimed at developing student writing proves to be particularly laborious. Although the potential value of peer assessment has been well documented in the literature, the associated administrative burden, also in relation to managing anonymity and intellectual ownership, makes this option less attractive, particularly in large classes. A potential solution involves the use of information and communication technologies to automate the logistics associated with peer assessment in a time-efficient way. However, uptake of such systems in the higher education community is limited, and research in this area is only beginning. This case study reports on the use of the Moodle Workshop module for formative peer assessment of students’ individual work in a first-year introductory macro-economics class of over 800 students. Data were collected through an end-of-course evaluation survey of students. The study found that using the feature-rich Workshop module not only addressed many of the practical challenges associated with paper-based peer assessments, but also provided a range of additional options for enhancing validity and reliability of peer assessments that would not be possible with paper-based systems.
- Full Text: false
- Date Issued: 2013
The economics of greening the Grahamstown National Arts Festival in South Africa
- Authors: Dobson, Blaise , Snowball, Jeanette D
- Date: 2012
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/71445 , vital:29851 , https://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC132010
- Description: The article analyses the broad history underpinning the notion of sustainable development and its context within the events industry in South Africa. It explores the willingness of festival-goers to pay for a hypothetical recycling programme to reduce the negative externalities of the Festival. Results show that festival-goers were, on average, willing to pay an additional R2.30 per "green" ticket to fund the proposed programme. A statistical regression was used to explore the determinants of willing-to-pay. If applied to all tickets, the total willing-to-pay amount far exceeded the actual cost of the recycling programme.
- Full Text: false
- Date Issued: 2012
Understanding student performance in a large class
- Authors: Snowball, Jeanette D , Boughey, Chrissie
- Date: 2012
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/71333 , vital:29834 , https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14703297.2012.677658
- Description: Across the world, university teachers are increasingly being required to engage with diversity in the classes they teach. Using the data from a large Economics 1 class at a South African university, this attempts to understand the effects of diversity on chances of success and how assessment can impact on this. By demonstrating how theory can be used to understand results, the paper aims to encourage university teachers to adopt proactive strategies in managing diversity, rather than simply explaining it using student characteristics.
- Full Text: false
- Date Issued: 2012
Where angels fear to tread: online peer-assessment in a large first-year class
- Authors: Mostert, Markus , Snowball, Jeanette D
- Date: 2012
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/69289 , vital:29480 , https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2012.683770
- Description: In the context of widening participation, large classes and increased diversity, assessment of student learning is becoming increasingly problematic in that providing formative feedback aimed at developing student writing proves to be particularly laborious. Although the potential value of peer assessment has been well documented in the literature, the associated administrative burden, also in relation to managing anonymity and intellectual ownership, makes this option less attractive, particularly in large classes. A potential solution involves the use of information and communication technologies to automate the logistics associated with peer assessment in a time-efficient way. However, uptake of such systems in the higher education community is limited, and research in this area is only beginning. This case study reports on the use of the Moodle Workshop module for formative peer assessment of students’ individual work in a first-year introductory macro-economics class of over 800 students. Data were collected through an end-of-course evaluation survey of students. The study found that using the feature-rich Workshop module not only addressed many of the practical challenges associated with paper-based peer assessments, but also provided a range of additional options for enhancing validity and reliability of peer assessments that would not be possible with paper-based systems.
- Full Text: false
- Date Issued: 2012
Government failure and state incapacity: the South African public sector in the 1990s
- Authors: Dollery, Brian , Snowball, Jeanette D
- Date: 2010
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/71343 , vital:29835 , https://doi.org/10.1080/10113430309511164
- Description: In their editorial introduction to the 1994 Special Issue of the South African Journal of Economic History devoted to a sectoral analysis of the South African economy during the 1980s, Stuart Jones and Jon Inggs described this period as a "lost decade", with per capita incomes even lower in 1990 than they had been in 1980. Moreover, "no other Western country experienced a comparable decline in the 1980s and South Africa herself had never experienced anything like it since the formation of Union in 1910". Thus, from the perspective of economic growth, the decade of the 1990s could not have had a less auspicious beginning.
- Full Text: false
- Date Issued: 2010
Introducing a learning management system in a large first year class: impact on lecturers and students
- Authors: Snowball, Jeanette D , Mostert, Markus
- Date: 2010
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/68631 , vital:29297 , https://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC37639
- Description: Publisher version , The challenges of teaching large classes are well documented in the literature on teaching in higher education. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) have the potential to address some of these challenges, but, used inappropriately, technology can perpetuate entrenched practices and simply support performance models of teaching that encourage transmission approaches to learning. This article reports on the impact of implementing a learning management system (LMS) in a first year introductory macroeconomics course with 600 students in a blended learning context. Experiences of the course coordinator, lecturers and an educational technologist are discussed and data was also collected on student perceptions via a course evaluation questionnaire. Results show that the LMS was successful in a number of areas, particularly in improving the lecturers' accessibility to students and in encouraging interaction and participations in online discussion forums.
- Full Text: false
- Date Issued: 2010