Topic: Gamification and social media as a catalyst for student learning and engagement

How do you keep 10 000 first-year students, who are 'forced' to do a compulsory module engaged? How can you leverage on digital tools to promote the attainment of module learning outcomes, graduate attributes, and critical cross field outcomes? One possible answer is using gamification and social media to keep students engaged while learning. Gamification is the incorporation of game-like elements in learning activities, with the aim of increasing student engagement and learning. It draws on self-determination theory, which highlights the importance of autonomy, competence and relatedness. By providing clear goals, immediate feedback, and opportunities for social interaction, gamification can enhance students' sense of agency and engagement within large, impersonal classes.

Topic: Learning to Let Go: Pedagogical Courage and Uncertainty with Escape Room Pedagogies

This presentation offers a reflective examination of a (virtual) escape room intervention in a teacher education module. The escape room aimed to foster student engagement and creativity by inviting them to navigate open-ended digital tasks and co-construct meaning within playful yet professionally grounded scenarios. However, it quickly evolved into a powerful pedagogical provocation highlighting the productive tensions of uncertainty, courage, and collaboration in higher education teaching, learning and assessment. This design destabilised traditional pedagogical authority and assessment expectations, echoing Barnett’s (2007) call for higher education to prepare students for the unknown. The intervention required students to navigate ambiguity, make collective decisions, and creatively respond to unfamiliar challenges. It also fostered assessment as learning, prioritising reflection and transformation over correct answers, allowing students to take on a more agentic role in their learning. For educators, it offers a provocation to view pedagogical experimentation as a form of inquiry and courage, seeing uncertainty as fertile ground for growth.

Topic: AI in Higher Education TLA: A Follow-Up Panel Discussion

By popular demand, the March Auxin session followed up Dr Hanelie Adendorff’s February Auxin. In this session, Dr Adendorff invited panellists to share how they are integrating Generative AI (GenAI) into their teaching, learning, and assessment practices. In this session Sharon Malan (EMS), Lennox Olivier (Arts and Social Sciences), Melody Neaves (Engineering), Hamman Schoonwinkel (EMS) and Jodie Lemphane (FMHS) took a deep dive into their experience with integrating GenAI, unpacking evaluative judgment, critical thinking, self-directed learning, computational thinking, and more. The conversation navigated discipline-specific challenges, ethical considerations, and other critical considerations regarding this evolving topic. As part of the session, Dr Adendorff also shared SU’s brand new “Cool Things” AI Case Study Guide, showcasing innovative approaches from Stellenbosch University academics. It can be found on the CTL’s website, or via bit.ly/coolthingsacademicsdo​

Topic: AI, Literacy, and the University: Where Are We Now?

Two years into the AI revolution, how has generative AI (GenAI), like ChatGPT, shaped teaching, learning, and assessment? Where do our university’s AI guidelines stand, and where are they headed? More importantly, what role should universities play in fostering AI literacy—not just for students, but also for educators? In this session, Hanelie Adendorff (Centre for Teaching and Learning) will explore the evolving landscape higher education in the context of GenAI, the importance of AI literacy, and how universities can prepare students to engage critically and ethically with AI.

Topic: Socially Responsive Curricula in Medical Education: A Student Perspective.

There is an urgency for health professionals to be better prepared to tackle health inequities. The literature argues that transitioning to responsive and contextually relevant curricula is an important strategy to equip students to be both clinically competent and critically conscious of the contexts in which they provide healthcare. However, little is known about how students understand social responsiveness and the implications for their involvement in reframing health professions curricula to be more responsive. This presentation will focus on a qualitative study that explored the experiences of undergraduate final-year medical students regarding social responsiveness.

Topic: What Does It Mean When We Say AI is a Tool, Not a Source?

In this Auxin session, we explored generative artificial intelligence literacies in teaching-learning-assessment (TLA) at Stellenbosch University (SU). The phrase “AI is a tool, not a source” has become a bit of a mantra in our communication around GenAI and TLA. But what exactly does it mean, and what are the practical implications of this assertion?

Topic: Between Studio and Lab: Engaging arts-based methods for art-science and interdisciplinary teaching and learning at SU and beyond.

Just over ten years ago, I began the process of niche specialisation in forensic facial imaging, after almost twenty years as a practicing artist, curator, and educator in studio art practice within the South African higher education context. These three aspects of my professional identity meant little - or so I first thought - when I found myself as a fellow – albeit ‘mature’ – student and experienced educator in a science lab with mostly (very) young postgraduate students. An MSc and a PhD later, both from UK institutions, I returned to studio art education at SU with the urgent need to engage students in radical curiosity; poke holes in the boundary between the art studio and science lab, and promote a broader understanding of the role of studio art education in the academic project. With reference to specific teaching and learning projects, this presentation will reflect on my personal journey of shifting from teacher to student and back again, and how the experience of ‘doing science’ from the perspective of an artist has enabled fresh pedagogical opportunities in both worlds. Engaging with students across visual arts and sciences has shown me how knowledge is constructed within these paradigms, along with the biases, blind spots, and myths each has of the other. This has inspired an ongoing feasibility study called ‘Fostering the Third Culture’, which explores the appetite for art-science interactions at SU.

Topic: Challenges of Transforming Curricula: Reflections by an interdisciplinary community of practic

Institutional transformation and inclusion have slowly become more prominent in the strategies of historically white institutions in South Africa. Despite these efforts, progress towards these goals has been limited. In this article, we reflect on our conversations about transforming our curricula and teaching practices as an interdisciplinary Community of Practice. Our conversations grappled with the lack of curricular transformation at Stellenbosch University, despite its aspirational transformation plan. We argue that difficult interdisciplinary conversations are key to interrupting our teaching practices and are crucial in the decolonising process. These conversations must be ongoing and enduring, because through sharing our stories we support agents of curriculum transformation in our different contexts. Our conceptual conversations explored various theories about decoloniality, and here we employ ubuntu pedagogy, as well as the concepts of redistribution, recognition and representation from social justice theory. We harness the collaborative energy of an interdisciplinary Community of Practice, with its associated storytelling, reading, writing and reflecting to harness the diversity of personal and disciplinary perspectives. We include some reflective vignettes to illustrate our process. The relevance of this study, beyond our contexts, arises from a gap in the decolonising process, from its theory to its practice. We argue that even a good institutional transformation plan will not guarantee the decoloniality of curricula. More is needed. Systemic change is needed, and difficult interdisciplinary conversations are part of this process. There must be recognition and representation of marginalised voices and specific context-related redistribution of curricula, so that transformation plans and theories can take effect.

Topic: Student feedback: The research possibilities

Student feedback at SU is a process through which significant amounts of information is collected on various matters related to students’ learning experiences. In order for this information to drive and inform change, it needs to be analyzed. What are the analytical possibilities for this data? This session focuses on the research opportunities for student feedback. In particular a distinction is made between student feedback as the object of research and student feedback as a data instrument for research. The purpose of the session is to encourage academics to undertake student feedback research.

Topic: How do we respond to student feedback?

SU students regularly provide feedback on their experiences of lecturers and/or modules. However, most of this feedback comes at the end of a module meaning lecturers have little opportunity to ‘close the loop’ by engaging students on the feedback they provided. And even if lecturers had an opportunity to engage students, there can be uncertainty about how to respond to the feedback. This question – what do I do with feedback once it has been provided by students – is explored by Drs. Marais (Department of Food Science) and Pearce (Genetics Department). It forms part of a series on student feedback, the first of which (28 February 2024) explored alternatives ways to collect student feedback.

Topic: Renewing Student Feedback at SU: Using class representatives as an alternative way to collect feedback

The purposes for which student feedback is collected and the instruments we use to collect this feedback are important aspects to consider in the renewal of student feedback at SU. Traditionally the SU teaching community approaches student feedback as an evaluation of lecturers and their teaching and relies on the formal feedback surveys distributed at the end of modules to hear students’ voices on their experiences. In this session the two presenters will demonstrate an alternative way of collecting feedback – by engaging class representatives. Their presentation will also suggest that collecting feedback this way serves a different purpose – enhancing student learning. Prof Arnott will describe his use of class representatives at the level of an individual module and Prof Blaine will show this can be scaled up to the level of the programme. The purpose of this session is to encourage the SU teaching community to explore different ways of collecting feedback that can ultimately enhance student learning.