THE TRANSFORMATIVE EFFECTS OF TRAINING ACADEMICS ON SCHOLARSHIP OF TEACHING AND LEARNING

The face of Higher Education is changing and it calls for the academic staff to be constantly provided with professional development and training initiatives that will help advance their teaching in order to enhance learning and increase success rate. Scholarship of Teaching and learning (SoTL), was recently introduced to South African Universities and universities adopted it at varying times.

This study explored the effects of participation of the academic ‘interest group’ in the introduction and training workshops of the SoTL. After which, representatives from the Faculties were grouped into focus groups accordingly. Staff members were supposed to work together, enabling further learning and sharing of views as the concept is still new and evolving.

Focus groups interviews were conducted during the first seminar, four months after the first workshop. This was done to determine the effects of the training on their teaching and the impact on student learning. The outcomes revealed that the training and the continuous dialogue on the mini-projects brought forth tremendous professional growth, evidenced by teaching techniques and curricula changes.

Students were also randomly interviewed and the findings were astonishing. Some students had an experience of both the SoTL trained lecturers and those who are not part of the professional development training. Students had recognised the differences between the two. They remarked about the interesting instructional and assessment techniques used by the trained ones. They are sometimes sent out to the communities to conduct a two-hour-mini problem based research as groups and more exciting stuff.

The Learning and Teaching Centre office is inundated with calls of staff members who were not part of the training, interested to find out about the next call for training.