Discipline-specific approaches to support 21st Century students, as well as tools and technologies, are some of the subthemes that were used to unpack the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) at this year’s Learning and Teaching with Technology Day.
Held on the Bellville campus, the day was organised by the Centre for Innovative Educational Technology under the theme, Unpacking the 4th Industrial Revolution. The event saw academics, lecturers and students discussing implications of the 4IR for their learning and teaching and the compatible technologies necessary.
DVC: Teaching and Learning, Prof Rishi Balkaran, said the role of the university in society includes elevating learning to another level and facilitating for students to become leaders.
Balkaran said the institution should be a centre for advanced knowledge and research and encouraged society to take ownership of the university and protect it.
Prof Deshen Moodley, Deputy Director: Centre for Artificial Intelligence (AI) Research at UCT, said AI is increasingly used by researchers in diverse disciplines. Moodley stated that E-learning has been around for over a decade but jobs have not changed.
“AI is enabling technology that has high potential,” he said.
Journalism Lecturer Sisanda Nkoala said the 4IR is a technological revolution that will fundamentally alter the way we live, work and relate to one another. Nkoala cited that sport and business journalism is already done by robots.
She argued that fewer people were buying newspapers and that journalists need to keep abreast of technological developments.
She said the Paris Declaration on Freedom of Journalism Education, which was adopted by the World Journalism Education Council during its plenary session in July, calls for the following reforms in journalism education:
Interdisciplinarity should be encouraged;
Teaching and practice need to happen together and;
Schools need to partner with industry so that the work done feeds into the learning;
Nkoala argued that today’s illiterate people are those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.
