This year the Chemical Engineering Department has been trying a coaching programme as both an intervention and attempt to understand the experience of their first year students.

Dr Disa Mogashana, coach, mentor and advisor at True Success Institute, recently presented feedback on the 2018 Student Coaching Pilot Programme which targeted 62% of the first year Extended Curriculum Programme (ECP)  students in Chemical Engineering.

Students attended five workshops on weekends between March and July, with the first eliciting information to fill in a comprehensive student profile.

The programme targeted students at biggest risk of failing by looking for particular markers: did the students fail their first chemistry test; was Chemical Engineering not their first choice; were they a walk-in; did they need funding; were they not living at home but not in residence on campus either.

Yes to those questions put the students into a group who had to attend all workshops while the rest could choose which sessions to attend.

The programme is based on a life coaching model.

The first workshop showed that some of the challenges faced by the ECP students included: being attacked on or off campus; travelling far distances to get to campus; feeling inadequate; loneliness and not having friends; insecurity about their future; family relationship issues; low self-esteem or lack of confidence; and mental issues such as anxiety or depression.

“The  programme tries to address all of these. It was important that the experience be proactive. How do you empower them to deal with a problem. The structures and way the university functions need to shift the way we teach, but the students also need to realise that they have the power to change,” asked Mogashana.

In addition to the workshops she also set up ongoing support for the students via Whatsapp to allow them to contact her directly for mentorship as needed.

The workshops covered topics such as budgeting, how to set goals and self-awareness and how the mind and emotions work.

She said student feedback showed they had developed a better awareness of the choices they can make and how much control they have over their actions.

Head of the Chemical Engineering Department Prof Daniel Ikhu-Omoregbe said the information could be useful for deciding if and when interventions needed to be made with particular students.

“I hope this will help us understand why students perform or do not. We need to see whether there have been changes in their test performance and next look at how they have adjusted in class. I hope to repeat this programme next year and my desire is to involve the mainstream students as well because they have some of the same issues too,” said Ikhu-Omoregbe.

Written by Theresa Smith

Dr Ignatius Ticha, language coordinator for the Applied Science Faculty, is experimenting with a different approach to multi-lingual teaching.

During Science Communication 1 classes he tasks a particular student to act as a language banker. Students are encouraged to use their home language if they do not know a particular English term and the word banker notes it and then finds the appropriate translation and explanation.

Ticha says this is a different process to the formation of the online multilingual glossaries which takes place in a formal forum incorporating input from students, lecturers and language experts.

This ongoing process of working with multi-lingual terms and explanations in the classroom was recently ameliorated with a poster exhibition assignment.

For the Science Communication 1 module taught by Dr Ticha and embedded in Prof Muhammad Nakhooda’s Immunology course the students created posters about indigenous remedies and then presented them to classmates, explaining how the remedies worked before presenting an exhibition of their posters to the Faculty in the week of Heritage Day.

The exhibition theme was Our Heritage, Our Health, Our Medicines and there were two components.

“The first was the presentation of their posters in class and students from the Film & Media Studies came and recorded their presentations,” said Ticha.

The students presented in groups of five, producing all manner of samples, some of which their classmates did not recognise at all.

The second component was the exhibition where the video of the classroom presentations was screened.

A key component of creating and presenting the posters was allowing the students to use multiple languages.

“We had students presenting part of their work in Kiswahili, which was quite interesting. We also had students presenting in Lingala which is the Congolese language, in French, and a lot of the students presented their work in isiXhosa and Tsonga, but also in English because the intention is to create a multi-lingual space.”

During the presentations in class the language banker had to write fast to note down indigenous names of herbs and the students engaged in vigorous debate.

“There was so much passion around some of the things that were presented. One of the things that came out for us was the debate around the divide between superstition and science.”

“What we are trying to do with this project is our own contribution towards the decolonisation of education because these home remedies are forms of indigenous knowledge that students bring with them,” said Ticha.

Written by Theresa Smith

With the summer season upon us Capetonians will be reaching for their sunglasses to protect them from the sun’s harsh rays. But will any old pair of sunglasses do the trick?

Students Aqeelah Harris and Ayakha Rammbuda recently set out to investigate Patient knowledge About Sunglasses and their UV protective qualities.

They were among the groups of final-year students in the Ophthalmic Sciences Department who recently presented their research findings to their classmates, second-year students and a panel consisting of the Department Head Angelique Hendricks, Prof Peter Clarke-Farr, Michael Jowell and Prasidh Ramson.

Among other things the students found that 38 percent of the participants didn’t know what UV radiation was.

When asked to rate the importance of wearing sunglasses only 26 percent of the participants rated it as very important, 58 percent rated it as reasonably important and 16 percent rated it as slightly important.

Although the sample size was small (50 participants) the students concluded that there was a need for awareness campaigns around the adverse effects of UV radiation, protection practices and knowledge of protective devices.

Some of the other research topics included the Nature of spectacle breakages, mishaps and repairs and The progression of Myopia in young adults.

Hendricks said the panel was very proud of the students and thanked the dedicated lecturers for their hard work.

“I hope you will work with us in future and publish your research,” she told the students.

Clarke-Farr said the research and presentations were getting better every year.

YOUNG RESEARCHERS: The third-year students with the panelists.

Delegates at the recent U6 Conference held on District Six Campus got a taste for the work of the African Centre for Herbal Research. Continue reading →