Page 8 - Teaching Innovation for the 21st Century

INTRODUCTION
In this volume, Teaching Innovation for the 21st Century: Showcasing UJ Teaching and Learning 2021, the authors present a set of papers that have taken advantage of a greater reflective distance from the immediacy of ‘emergency remote teaching’ experienced in 2020. Together, the papers in this collection present a set of logical and thoughtful initiatives that innovate across a variety of domains in higher education.
The articles represent a wide range of disciplines and fields of practice. In brief, these are:
• Courses and fields of study from Art Therapy and the Visual Arts to Education and Educational Psychology;
• Specific tasks and applications in Anthropology and Development, Chemical Engineering, Human Anatomy and Physiology and Physics, and Strategic Communication;
• Institution-wide imperatives in the language of learning as an aspect of decolonisation, tutor development in improved teaching and learning, student development programme review as enriching the embodiment of the ‘internal quality assurance’ approach now being promoted by the CHE.
The individual papers are rooted in their own unique disciplinary or field-specific paradigms, and each has its own distinctive reporting style. What all the papers have in common, however, is the fact that they are as succinct as they are readable. All articles are scholarly, but more importantly they are accessible and interesting pieces designed to be generative, igniting the readers’ reflection
on their own practices. They should appeal to a wide range of readers, from the generalist to the expert, across the different fields of expertise represented in a university.
Apart from the individual value of each contribution, their collective value lies in what we can all learn about innovative, quality teaching and (lifelong) learning.