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Thinking outside the box: Reinventing Work-Integrated Learning (Teaching Practice) in a time of crisis

Presenter

Ms Adrienne van As

Two Oceans Graduate Institute

Adrienne van As is a senior lecturer and the Teaching Practice Coordinator at the Two Oceans Graduate Institute. She has an initial background as an Intermediate and Senior Phase teacher, but after a few years in the field, she joined the higher education landscape, specializing in teacher training. Her interests are Teaching Practice (Work-Integrated Learning), the History of Education, Online Learning and multi-grade education. Her current research focuses on factors that influence transactional distance in online learning.

 The Two Oceans Graduate Institute is a new, small higher education institute that offers an online B.Ed degree (Intermediate Phase), preparing teachers for public and private primary schools in a variety of contexts.

Abstract

For the last few months, higher education institutions all over the world were forced out of classrooms by the Covid-19 pandemic. All the relevant parties had to think outside the box on offering programmes in an online environment. For many, this shift from the known to the unknown was a daunting task. The Two Oceans Graduate Institute is a new, small higher education institute that offers an online B.Ed degree (focusing on the Intermediate Phase). Consequently, the teaching and learning programme continued more or less uninterrupted. However, one crucial element of our programme, Teaching Practice (Work-Integrated Learning), had to be altered by aligning the purpose of teaching practice with the realities of the situation. What can you do when students cannot experience and learn from the time they would normally have spent in classrooms? This presentation will not only focus on how the Two Oceans Graduate Institute addressed the challenges and what the students learned but also what the lecturers gained from the experience to make some important changes to the programme. 

Report on Instructional Continuity Planning (ICP) and remote teaching: