Leadership, management and administration

Applying the criteria for this area to my work across departmental, faculty and institutional levels is particularly difficult given the nature of my work. It is also hard to separate these three areas as part of my work and within the EdTech team more broadly, as they are interconnected. We manage systems and software and support people in using these and to enable this one is often involved in all three activities at once. On a daily basis my colleagues and I manage the university’s LMS (RUconnected) and provide support to lecturers and students around the use thereof. We also test, pilot, implement and support new plug-ins and softwares as the need arises. With the pandemic, we have been challenged to be more responsive and to encourage lecturers to use familiar or new tools in ways to ensure maximum accessibility for a diverse student body. While we provide an educational technology infrastructure for teaching and learning, we are also aware that one is not just providing a technical ‘thing’, but that we are also infrastructuring practices. Star’s (1999) work on the ethnography of infrastructure reminds us that infrastructures are always relational and that the connection between technologies and people’s lived experiences with mediating particular activities using these technologies are key. As an educational technology specialist, one is drawing on implicit understandings of this connection in almost everything that one does.

Above: Graphic representation of the shift from blended learning to ERT

The ‘RU’ in the graphic above indicates where university lecturers were in terms of their practices and adoption of educational technologies prior to the pandemic where the integration of blended learning was minimal in the majority of departments and the red ‘X’ is where teaching and learning had to shift to enable ERT during the pandemic. This is an adaptation of DHET’s programme provision grid that shows a spectrum of different modes of provision in contact-based and distance offerings.

While this shift had major implications for teaching and learning where staff and students’ digital practices involved rapid upskilling and improved support, it also had a ripple effect on the work of the EdTech team. A comparison of the 2019 and 2020 CHERTL annual reports also evidences the growing workload, responsibilities and achievements of the EdTech team.

Peer review and expert input by Dr Ingrid Siebörger (Acting HOD & Senior Lecturer, Information Systems)

The following areas are discussed further as essential leadership areas in my written portfolio:

• Collaboration and mentoring in the EdTech team

• Managing and maintaining RUconnected

• Choosing appropriate softwares and funding these

• Zoom, LabSims and The Invigilator app

• Supporting students

• Support and advocacy for OER at Rhodes

• Chairing the Academic Technologies Roundtable

• Other committee work

News pieces that demonstrate my leadership:

Open Access Day Event (RU Library News, November 2019)

Rhodes University affirms its commitment to Open Access (RU News, November 2019)

HELTASA to bring together top minds in higher education (RU News, November 2019)

Rhodes University launches online orientation programme (SABC News, April 2020)

Oppenheimer Memorial Trust donates R3.8 million to support remote teaching (RU News, July 2020)

CHERTL reinvents its Academic Orientation Programme under COVID-19 restrictions (RU News, February 2021)