Page 9 - Teaching Innovation for the 21st Century

Teaching Innovation for the 21st Century | Showcasing UJ Teaching and Learning 2021
In focusing on the aggregated value of this collection, there are three key themes.
1.
The recruitment and usefulness of
technology
Some academics may scoff at the ‘technos’, perhaps because of the negative effects of the digital age and the internet:
Intellectually, the concern is one of flattening: the collapse of notions of excellence into a mulch of amateurism and self-promotion ... in replacing expert filtering with mass access ... the internet has gifted power to human nature in its mob form:
drowning out dissenting or exceptional voices, sweeping along a passive majority with easily digestible arguments to pandering to popular culture” (Chatfield 2012: 75–76).
At the very opposite end of this pole is an alternative view, that it is precisely the digital age that has forced the Higher Education system to ‘examine its parts, make an assessment and decide whether we want to help fix it, or look for a better engine’ (Peters et al. 2022:758). What UJ has seen is that the creative use of the Internet and digital technologies are central to innovation. For example, two of the initiatives made effective use of Twitter. A greater number relied on mainly open-source software such as Photovoice, Sonic Visualiser and Audacity, Data Analysis ToolPak, Assess SpreadSheet, Flashforge Creator 3 3D Printer, Design Expert, with the future use of Autshumato signalled in one case.
Yet others moved their activities into the online space, successfully overcoming the challenges of the dislocations of distance. The value of these technologies as tools in an arsenal is the focus of this publication.
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