Written assignments for large classes pose a far more significant challenge in the age of the GenAI revolution. Suggestions such as oral exams and formative assessments are not always feasible with many students in a class. Therefore, we conducted a study in South Africa and involved 280 Honors students to explore the usefulness of Turnitin's AI…

The logistics and cost of running large class tutorials to improve learning for students in high enrolment courses raise questions about whether the associated effort and cost are worthwhile. The option to replace these class activities with online homework with its promise of built-in feedback is attractive. Using an activity theory lens and an…

This study used the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework to provide a collaborative experience for students from marginalised communities in a large enrollment module in South Africa. The CoI framework consists of three elements including the social, cognitive, and teaching presences. This study focused on the teaching presence element, along with…

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to disrupt the teaching and learning in international higher education. Those of us in the global South have particularly been hard hit, struggling to balance working/ functioning economies, a struggling healthcare system, education, commerce, trade, transport, and the community spread of what was later found to be…

This article reports on a study of which the main aim was to provide insight into whether increasing the enrolment of large classes influences student academic achievement at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN), City, South Africa. The massification of higher education has led to greater numbers of students being enrolled in contact programmes.…

Physiology students grapple with large amounts of subject content and hence memorize facts to pass examinations. In parallel, students display limited critical-thinking and creative skills, integration abilities, and/or a deeper engagement with subject content. This study aimed to assess the feasibility of introducing active learning methods…

The experiences of course facilitators in connectivist-type MOOCs are poorly reported. Yet there is evidence that the values and beliefs of facilitators have an important impact on the learning experiences of participants, and that reducing their interactions with students may also reduce the effectiveness of the course. This study aimed to…

This book offers an important overview of technology-enhanced education in Southern Africa. With original research from Malawi, Mauritius, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania and Zimbabwe, this book provides in-depth scientific scholarship focused on the dynamic multimodal learning environments in the region. With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic,…

Using Piaget's perspective of individual cognition and Vygotsky's theory of social constructivism as lenses, this paper reports on the instructional prompts that are used by biology lecturers to promote student interaction. The study further reports on the link between the prompts used and the subsequent quality of the interaction. Three lecturers…

As social justice and decolonisation discussions fill the physical and virtual corridors of universities in South Africa, educators, and in this case, MOOC designers, are inevitably influenced by them. They are prompted to reflect on such topics, whether in agreement or with scepticism. Provoked by one interviewee's comment that 'you could…

This paper reflects on some of the themes emerging from a consideration of recent research at the nexus of technologies, learning and culture. The authors comment on the expansive nature of the concept of learning spaces in papers featuring an investigation of technology enhanced learning (TEL) and communication design studios in the UK and…

Team assessment has been suggested as a competency-based collaborative learning technique. Critical to the success of an assessment for learning, in competency-based education, is the use of formative feedback. This study reports on the development of, and the students' experience of, a Team Assessment with Immediate Feedback (TAIF), in which…

Teaching large classes poses many challenges to lecturers where massification is a reality in higher education. There are implications for both teaching and effective learning in this context. The need for accountability to learners in education provision served as motivation for a study of large classes in the largest faculty of one university…

The effects of overcrowded classrooms are far-reaching for teachers and learners. Many parents base their decision on whether to send their child to a particular school on the prospective number of learners in the child's classroom (Mustafa, Mahmoud, Assaf, Al-Hamadi & Abdulhamid, 2014:178). All teacher training institutions ought to ascertain…

Foundation phase teachers in South African schools follow a socio-constructivist approach to the teaching and learning of mathematics, which entails that learners experiment freely with concepts and are encouraged to communicate and share their thoughts and ideas. In an effort to understand the impact that the physical learning environment, such…