Creating a virtual classroom: evaluating the use of online discussion forums to increase teaching and learning activities in an introductory accounting class
- Authors: Bezuidenhout, L Peta
- Date: 2008
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: Conference paper
- Identifier: vital:6069 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1004630
- Description: In teaching large classes, the educationally beneficial informal interaction between students and between lecturer and students is generally reduced, while effective use of both students' and lecturer's time is often a challenge. During student consultations, especially over the already stressful test and examination periods, many of the questions asked by the students are the same or similar. The lecturer needs to respond to each query by providing the same detailed explanation for the problem, resulting in ineffective use of time for the lecturer, while students waste time waiting for an appointment, or more often, simply don't bother to follow up on any queries they may have. Having a social presence is important for students' cognitive development, but in a large class posing questions or interrogating issues during a lecture appears to be challenging for many students. It is often not easy for students to initiate discussions or establish relationships with peers or the lecturer due to feelings of vulnerability and due to the size and impersonal atmosphere of the lecture theatre. This paper deals with the introduction of online discussion forums in an introductory accounting course and the benefits and problems experienced by the students, tutors and lecturer as a result thereof. Feedback received from these participants is discussed. The introduction and use of these forums resulted in a virtual classroom being created, where significantly more teaching and learning activities took place, to the benefit of all participants. Participation could have been peripheral - in the form of simply reading discussions; or active – through posting questions, or responding to questions.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2008
- Authors: Bezuidenhout, L Peta
- Date: 2008
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: Conference paper
- Identifier: vital:6069 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1004630
- Description: In teaching large classes, the educationally beneficial informal interaction between students and between lecturer and students is generally reduced, while effective use of both students' and lecturer's time is often a challenge. During student consultations, especially over the already stressful test and examination periods, many of the questions asked by the students are the same or similar. The lecturer needs to respond to each query by providing the same detailed explanation for the problem, resulting in ineffective use of time for the lecturer, while students waste time waiting for an appointment, or more often, simply don't bother to follow up on any queries they may have. Having a social presence is important for students' cognitive development, but in a large class posing questions or interrogating issues during a lecture appears to be challenging for many students. It is often not easy for students to initiate discussions or establish relationships with peers or the lecturer due to feelings of vulnerability and due to the size and impersonal atmosphere of the lecture theatre. This paper deals with the introduction of online discussion forums in an introductory accounting course and the benefits and problems experienced by the students, tutors and lecturer as a result thereof. Feedback received from these participants is discussed. The introduction and use of these forums resulted in a virtual classroom being created, where significantly more teaching and learning activities took place, to the benefit of all participants. Participation could have been peripheral - in the form of simply reading discussions; or active – through posting questions, or responding to questions.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2008
Thought amidst waste : conjunctural notes on the Democratic Project in South Africa
- Authors: Pithouse, Richard, 1970-
- Date: 2012
- Language: English
- Type: Conference paper
- Identifier: vital:6195 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1008581
- Description: (from the introduction} In a recent essay Achille Mbembe argues that the rendering of human beings as waste by the interface of racism and capitalism in South Africa means that “for the democratic project to have any future at all, it should necessarily take the form of a conscious attempt to retrieve life and 'the human' from a history of waste”. He adds that “the concepts of 'the human', or of 'humanism', inherited from the West will not suffice. We will have to take seriously the anthropological embeddedness of such terms in long histories of "the human" as waste.”
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2012
- Authors: Pithouse, Richard, 1970-
- Date: 2012
- Language: English
- Type: Conference paper
- Identifier: vital:6195 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1008581
- Description: (from the introduction} In a recent essay Achille Mbembe argues that the rendering of human beings as waste by the interface of racism and capitalism in South Africa means that “for the democratic project to have any future at all, it should necessarily take the form of a conscious attempt to retrieve life and 'the human' from a history of waste”. He adds that “the concepts of 'the human', or of 'humanism', inherited from the West will not suffice. We will have to take seriously the anthropological embeddedness of such terms in long histories of "the human" as waste.”
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2012
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