Innovation in Teaching & Learning

'Slow teaching' in a pandemic: Innovations toward a more human geography

On 4 February 2020, during my first lecture of the year for GES111 Introduction to Human Geography, the forward progress of the module was threatened by a combination of challenges including load-shedding, student protests, and problems with student registration. Yet, I was convinced that I should carry-on with my intended focus on 'slow teaching'--a pedagogical stance that embraces deliberate, reflective and responsive teaching and learning methods. As I introduced the module and its broad range of content in human geography, I recognised the tension between the need to deliver and assess the enormous span of content and slow teaching’s measure, deliberation and reflexivity. In preparing for the introductory lecture—and in its delivery—I noted to myself and verbally to my students that ’slow’ might not be a simple question of velocity, but rather about not leaving others behind at the expense of progress. Little did I know that the weeks and months ahead would place enormous strain on students, lecturers and the teaching endeavour broadly-speaking. The COVID-19 pandemic and South Africa's lockdown forced me to think of alternatives to delivering module content, yet my promise (to myself and my students) remained in-tact thanks to inspiration from Bayo Akomolafe who once noted “the times are urgent, let us slow down”.

On-line learning was challenging, but the efforts in GES111 and other modules were appreciated by students. Through a combination of narrated slideshows exported to video formats, multiple WhatsApp groups and parallel formats for all content, we all seemed to get by, and hopefully leave no one behind at the expense of progress.

Wow, Dr Bradley Rink made the transaction from contact learning to online learning extremely easy. From the practicals to the tests, it was literally easy and simple .

Evaluation comment from GES111 student, June 2020


It was a really great experience. [He is] a great lecturer and he explains the work very [well]. He always goes the extra mile for his students. Loved my journey with him.

Evaluation comment from GES111 student, June 2020

At the virtual lectern

TOU211: The journey of a module

As I took on my new post in January 2015, I focused my teaching efforts on understanding the curriculum at that moment in time whilst looking for ways to contribute my research-led teaching to its further development. Amongst the modules that I was assigned to teach was TOU211 The Tourism Industry. In my review of teaching material from previous semesters, I noted opportunities to focus lecture content, learning activities and assessment in ways that might improve student learning outcomes whilst also aligning the module with the Departmental curriculum as a whole. I began my teaching of TOU211 in the first semester of my appointment having made changes within the confines of the Arts Faculty description of the module at that time. I had great trepidation as a geographer in having to take an industry-focused approach to the topic of tourism that I had already investigated in my own research through lenses of embodiment, race, sexuality and mobility. At the time--and to this day--my understanding of tourism as a phenomenon is that it can be critically explored through key concepts in geography including space/place, landscape, mobility and subjectivity. As such I was pleased to learn that the prerequisite modules for TOU211 were GES111 Introduction to Human Geography and GES121 Introduction to Physical Geography.

In my review of content from previous semesters of TOU211 The Tourism Industry, I found critical omissions in module outlines as they related to the spatial elements of tourism, the tourist subjectivity and mobility—all of which define current debates in tourism studies as an academic discipline. As the introductory module in the Department’s Tourism major, it was clear to me that an approach that was both introductory and grounded in geographical theory and analyses (given the pre-requisites of the module being GES111 and GES121) would benefit the framing of the module. Therefore I proposed and received approval for a new module title starting in 2016, Introduction to Tourism, that included completely revised learning outcomes and content in order to align with the Department’s tourism curriculum while also recognizing the spatial dimension of tourists, their mobilities and destinations. The approval of changes came at an opportune time, as I was given the opportunity to use the module as a test case during the Teaching & Learning Induction Workshop at MontFleur in September 2015. The outputs of that workshop allowed me to align learning goals with UWC Graduate Attributes, and to think more critically about learning activities and assessment tasks.

The sweeping changes implemented in the TOU211 module in the second year of my appointment are also reflected upon elsewhere in this portfolio, as these changes demonstrate the theoretical approaches to my teaching, the alignment of my teaching with graduate attributes and the infusion of technology in teaching, amongst others. The impact of these changes on student learning is demonstrated in comments from student evaluations as seen below:

This course helped me in so many ways, because it taught me so much about tourism and the geography within tourism. It helped me to understand that tourism is not only based on the touristic aspects, but also the geographical aspects which also plays a very big role within the tourism industry.


The module was very effective in helping me to understanding the concept of mobility and how it geographically enables tourism, also in terms of the destination itself i am able to comprehend the importance of economics, the environment and society and how they interrelate to one another within the destination and the impacts which tourism has on these spheres.


(Comments from TOU211-2016 Student Evaluations)

Scaffolded and Innovative Assessment:

My innovations in TOU211 have also included the introduction of a scaffolded approach to assessment, as illustrated in the diagram to the right. In this approach to assessment, both the content and the assessment were 'built up' through a range of learning activities in both classroom lecture and tutorial environments. After sourcing a photograph for use in the assignment, students were given opportunities to generate knowledge through group interaction and discussion. Varied learning activities allowed students with different learning styles to gather knowledge in preparation for the assignment. After rounds of peer review of their assignment draft, students submitted a preliminary draft and feedback was given by me in preparation for the final submission. This scaffolded approach enabled this assessment task to produce formative outcomes.

Alignment with UWC graduate attributes:

Innovations applied to TOU211 Introduction to Tourism illustrate my active involvement in curriculum development and renewal in alignment with UWC graduate attributes. As the introductory module in the tourism major at UWC, students enter after two semesters of geographical theory in the first year consisting of content focusing on human geography (GES111) and physical geography (GES121). Formerly titled ‘The Tourism Industry’, TOU211 has been re-conceptualised in order to capitalise on theory gained in the first year sequence while also building skills in geographical thought, critical thinking and communication that are constituent of an Arts education. Using learning activities both inside and outside of the formal classroom, TOU211 is designed to allow students to demonstrate their ability to generate and apply geographical knowledge and theory to tourism studies. At the same time, students should exit the module with an ability to articulate the socio-cultural, environmental, and economic impacts of tourism at various scales. Such skill-building and knowledge generation is contextually-appropriate and relevant to the enormous environmental, developmental cultural impacts of tourism in South Africa.

The changes that I introduced in TOU211 in 2016 illustrate my concern for student learning needs through the approach to: 1) Inquiry-based learning; 2) Intellectual, physical and virtual spaces which enable creative and flexible teaching and learning; and 3) Facilitation of teaching and learning through tutorial or small group interaction. The application of these strategic themes is consciously embedded within three of UWC’s graduate attributes, including: Critically relevant and literate—where tourism is approached in evaluative, analytical, and interpretative ways through learning activities; Ethically, environmentally and socially aware and active—through an impacts-based approach to understanding how tourism has both positive and negative outcomes in economic, social and environmental realms; and Skilled communicators—where a variety of flexible, on-line and social-media platforms are used for teaching and learning activities focused on visual and textual literacy. The changes that I implemented in TOU211 in 2016 focus on these UWC graduate attributes in the following ways:

  • Inquiry-based learning: Through the use of a portfolio-building learning process, students are taken through a process of interpreting touristic landscapes through analysis of socio-cultural; environmental; and economic impacts. Students source a photograph of a touristic landscape, either by taking it themselves or finding it from a secondary source where use of the image is legally and ethically sound. In building a portfolio of evidence over the semester, students will examine and identify elements in the photograph, engaging the visual outcomes of their inquiry with theory that underpins a geographical approach to tourism, including tourist subjectivity, mobilities, and destinations (amenities, attractions, access and ancillary services). Student portfolios will be presented through blogs and/or printed posters, culminating in a final curated show in the UWC Library during the second semester 2016;

  • Intellectual, physical and virtual spaces which enable creative and flexible teaching and learning: In addition to re-thinking the structure and format of tutorials, TOU211 learning activities make use of asynchronous teaching and learning approaches including blogs and social media platforms such as Instagram and Twitter (see at right: one particular tweet that brought a critical perspective of tourism from an African perspective). Through the process of skills- and portfolio-building, students examine visual imagery sourced through their active engagement with either field-based or internet-based methods that are not limited to the time or space of a classroom;

  • Facilitation of teaching and learning through tutorial or small group interaction: The skills required for students to source and interpret images and to answer questions about the authorship, source, type, audience and context of those images will necessarily take place in small groups and through hands-on learning in a tutorial or small group setting. As this project takes the tutorial beyond an ‘extended lecture’, learning activities will focus on examination and interpretation of tourist landscapes.

The destination: confluence of theory and practice

The TOU211 class assignment allowed students to integrate theory into practice--in other words, to apply knowledge from the fields of geography and tourism into everyday landscapes of tourism. Theory thus provided a means to unlock new ways of seeing otherwise familiar and banal landscapes. In one case, as seen below, a student from the coastal town of Hermanus drew critical reflections on mobility in tourism by linking the movement of tourists with the annual migration of Southern Right whales.

Infusion of technologies:

When I assumed my appointment, few lecturers in the Department were engaged with e-learning platforms at UWC, including iKamva. I began to champion the use of iKamva and Turnitin with my Departmental colleagues. With UWC’s recent focus on world class learning and research environments ‘fit for the digital age’, I have been appointed as the ‘Blended Learning Champion’ for my Department. I see the infusion of technologies in teaching and learning not simply as a cost- and effort-saving exercise, but rather it is an opportunity to extend the spaces of learning beyond the classroom and campus contexts. Therefore, I have used technology to assist in the delivery of content, in the extension of learning beyond lectures and set readings, and in allowing effective assessment task design. One example from TOU211 further illustrates my use of technology.


In the class assignment for TOU211 as discussed above, I asked students to use the technologies at-hand (a pre-survey was conducted in order to understand levels of access to various technologies, equipment and connectivity) in order to capture real-world examples of tourist landscapes in their surroundings. The results of the survey (n=48) revealed that a large majority of respondents (81.3%) had access to an app-ready ‘smart’ mobile phone with camera and internet access. I saw this survey as a critical initial step in delivering class content and task assessments requiring the capturing and analysis of visual imagery as it relates to tourism. The results also responded to concerns over inclusion of new technologies in teaching and learning in presumably low-resourced contexts. Once I established that students could access content delivered in novel ways such as Twitter and Instagram, I began using Twitter to share touristic images and content using the hashtag #tou211.

TOU211 to TOU223: The journey continues...

With the transition from 'long/thin' 10-credit modules in the second-year to 'long/fat' 20-credit modules, TOU211 has been integrated into a new module entitled Introduction to Tourism & Economic Development. In this module, my focus on teaching tourism through a landscape approach that continues to focus on multi-modal literacies. Student outputs are shared with a broader audience through our project website as seen below [Image: Alfred Basin, V&A Waterfront, Kenneth Lawrence].

Innovation in other modules

GES111: Fostering asynchronous learning with narrated PowerPoint slides and on-line interactive content

Even before the global changes in teaching caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, I had begun to engage with the generative possibilities of on-line and blended learning. Using available technologies such as iKamva and PowerPoint slides, as early as 2016 I began to provide narrated slides for GES111 students as a thematic overview to each section of the module. Two examples from the section of the GES111 course on cities and urbanisation illustrates this: Firstly, an on-line interactive lecture was used to welcome students to the section on cities and urbanisation. The delivery of teaching materials on-line allowed for asynchronous learning and flexible pacing to accommodate students' needs. The on-line 'lecture' included interactive comments from students and myself, links to videos and other digital content, and a short diagnostic assessment to test students' knowledge of urban issues. A screenshot from the interactive content can be seen below, showing a prompt from the lecturer and comments from students that all could read and reflect upon in the next steps. Like a more detailed example below from TOU322, I embedded a narrated PowerPoint slideshow as an on-line learning activity for GES111. Like the example below, the slideshow with a voiceover narrative from the lecturer, allowed students to pace their own learning, to be flexible with the time and place of their learning, and would allow for continuous review of the material as needed for revision.

GES222: From Global Population Crises to Population Geographies

The case of GES222 Global Population Crises also provides examples of innovation in my teaching. Similar to my review of TOU211, I noted omissions and misalignment of content with the Departmental curriculum. I thus proposed changes to the module including title and content. The proposed module title Population Geographies was later approved, allowing for recognition of further debates in the sub-discipline of the same name. These debates recognise and challenge Malthusian approaches to population studies that may tend to demonise and moralise differences in population trends between the global North and South. The previous module title posited a neo-Malthusian approach that frames all population processes as ‘crises’. The new title ‘Population Geographies’ recognises the spatial approach to the principle population processes of fertility, mortality and migration, and allows for the geographical analysis of a variety of trends in population change—including growth, decline and distribution.


TOU322: Delivery of on-line content and re-thinking group work/assessment

Other examples of innovation come from TOU322 Analytical Techniques for Tourism. In order to ensure consistent delivery of learning material in the midst of disruptions on campus, I developed narrated slide shows (delivered as YouTube videos) that could ensure asynchronous and individually-paced learning to students. The challenges of internet access for students while off-campus notwithstanding, the delivery of lecture content in this format nonetheless allowed students in this exit-level module to continue progress toward completing their studies. An example of one such lecture is embedded below. As an exit-level module focused on research methods in tourism, I wanted to include an element of group work within the assessment tasks. In my experience, students often look unfavourably on group assessment, as they feel that efforts distributed unevenly whilst results (marks) are shared equally. In the case of the TOU322 assignment 2, the group aspect was augmented by a peer marking structure where each team member was given the opportunity to distribute marks according to effort and output. That peer marking process was anonymous (comprising 25% of the final assignment mark for each student) with the balance of the final assignment mark being applied equally to all members of the group.

Scholarship and Professionalisation of Teaching & Learning

Scholarship of teaching & learning:

A number of past and present projects demonstrate my focus not only on teaching but also on the scholarship of teaching and learning. The first is a project focused on multimodal literacies entitled ‘Multimodal teaching and learning in the Humanities: investigating politics and projects of critical literacy and epistemological access in discipline-specific contexts’. Part of that project involves the transformation of the learning potential for tutorials. The results of that project, focused on transforming TOU211 have been discussed in Rink et al. (2020) 'Crossing borders as new academics in contested times' https://doi.org/10.14426/cristal.v8i1.229.

Details of other projects are below:

  • Focus on affective learning: The second example of my scholarship in this regard is my chapter entitled ‘Sojourn to the dark continent: Landscape and affect in an African mobility experience’ published in January 2017 in an edited collection entitled The Romance of Study andVolunteering Abroad: Affect in the Experience of Border-Crossing (Berghahn Books). In the chapter I use the geographical concept of landscape as a point of departure, the new mobilities paradigm and affect theory in order to reflect on learning experiences that promote affective learning outcomes. Typically difficult to address in a classroom environment, affective learning objectives target the awareness and growth in attitudes, emotion, and feelings. Using examples from learning activities during student orientation and field-based learning in the context of a winter school geography module, I discuss the benefits and challenges of affective learning through physical, emotional and interpersonal experiences during the learning activities;

  • Large class pedagogy (LCP): I have written a chapter entitled 'Measuring learning for the masses: Assessment strategies for large classes' that is part of The Handbook of Teaching and Learning in Geography, edited by Profs Helen Walkington, Jennifer Hill and Sarah Dyer, published in 2019 by Edward Elgar; and

  • Teaching mobilities: Finally, I presented a paper at the Royal Geographical Society in September 2017 in a session entitled Teaching Mobilities: Practice, Pedagogies, Power. Organised by leading scholars in the field Peter Adey (Royal Holloway, University of London, UK); Simon Cook (Royal Holloway, University of London, UK); and Justin Spinney (Cardiff University, UK). The paper 'Mobilizing theory through practice: Authentic learning in teaching mobilities' was pubished in the Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 44(1) in 2020: https://doi.org/10.1080/03098265.2019.1695107

Teaching & learning seminars and presentations

I have presented at the following seminars dedicated to teaching & learning:

  • 12 June 2019: International conference paper entitled ‘Encountering the city through mobility and mobile methods’, presented at ECAS 2019 Africa: Connections and Disruptions, in a session panel on Encountering Publics in African Cities, University of Edinburgh, Scotland. 11-14 June 2019.

  • 24 May 2018: Directorate of Teaching & Learning, University of the Western Cape. Seminar on creating professional e-portfolios.

  • 1 March 2018: Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching, University of Cape Town. Seminar entitled 'Mobilising theory through practice: Authentic learning through student-centred, socially-embedded pedagogies'.

  • 19 October 2017: Directorate of Teaching & Learning, University of the Western Cape. Seminar presentation entitled 'Engaging students through geographical theory and everyday practice', Teaching and Learning Portfolio Development Workshop.

Professionalisation of teaching & learning:

In September 2015 I took part in the Teaching and Learning Induction Workshop delivered by the Directorate of Teaching and Learning at UWC. In addition, I have remained a frequent and active participant in workshops, colloquia and seminars provided by the Directorate since the start of my appointment. Among those are:

  • 4 March 2015: Teaching & Learning Seminar (Brenda Leibowitz & Vivienne Bozalek)

  • 12 August 2015: Teaching & Learning Seminar (Education for global citizenship at universities. Potentialities of formal and informal learning spaces to foster cosmopolitanism. Prof Alejandra Boni, Technical University of Valencia, Spain)

  • 7 October 2015: Teaching & Learning Seminar (Elmarie Costandius, Stellenbosch University, "Socially just pedagogies and community interaction")

  • 13 May 2016: Colloquium on the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning and Socially Just Pedagogies

  • 15 August 2016: Teaching & Learning Seminar, Multimodal Literacies (Dr Arlene Archer: Multimodality in Higher Education: Changing texts, spaces and pedagogies)

  • November 2016: I completed the course Professionalisation of Teaching & Learning at UWC, held from 29 July through 4 November 2016.