Page 72 - Teaching Innovation for the 21st Century

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Teaching Innovation for the 21st Century | Showcasing UJ Teaching and Learning 2021
Over the past decade, ADC has developed its interventions and resources to increasingly include augmenting face- to-face student support with complementary online resources and opportunities.
Introduction
The Academic Development Centre (ADC)
at UJ sees its core function as supporting undergraduate student academic success. To this end, the Centre takes a series of theory-
and data-informed approaches to its various initiatives and endeavours to create multiple opportunities and channels through which to provide student support. As such, the ADC works closely with the faculties/college and other UJ support services to support student success in a variety of ways.
Over the past decade, ADC has developed its interventions and resources to increasingly include augmenting face-to- face student support with complementary online resources and opportunities. The arrival of Covid-19 created a situation where this gradual developmental process was pushed forward with exponential speed to ensure that support was made available in thoughtful and accessible ways whilst students were studying remotely. As the
worst pressure of the pandemic has started to ease, the ADC leadership team decided to take an intentional and theory-informed but practical approach to designing and implementing a blended approach to student academic support.
The purpose of developing an increasingly and intentionally blended learning experience for undergraduate students includes meeting the needs of the current generation of students (Johnson 2021); to improve the student success support and to help students feel more connected, and part of the learning community (Suder & Calma 2021). In addition to the blended nature of the work, Invitational Education theory (Purkey & Novak 2008) informs the ADC team with regards to the intentional approach (informed by theory and crystallising principles if it works) that is used.
Because of the strong physical presence that ADC has had at UJ since its inception, the major developmental need to support an intentionally blended approach was the further development and enrichment of the various online tools and resources that would effectively support student success. This necessitated the development of a number of online resources to support the goal of enhancing student success. Below are a few examples of these online resources to illustrate the strategy that was implemented: