Moses Basitere, ECP lecturer in Chemical Engineering, recently attended the National ECP colloquium jointly organised by DUT and MUT in Durban on 20-21 September 2017. In this post he shares some personal highlights of the event.

DUT and MUT partnered in the spirit of collaboration to bring together public universities in South Africa to engage on Foundation Provisioning imperatives. The theme for the colloquium was “Pushing the Frontiers of Foundation Provisioning: Reflecting on more than a decade of practice –Are we winning?” The keynote address was delivered by our very own CPUT ECP Institutional Coordinator, AssProf James Garraway. The main aim of the event sought to continue disseminating best practices in advancing student success in the ECP educational space. The presentations at the events addressed the following subthemes;

• Implementation of different foundation/ECP models
• Forms and relevancy of student support in ECP
• Effective ECP practices which inspire effective learning
• Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) in ECP • Technology enhanced Teaching and Learning

I joined the conference on September 21 and I gave a presentation titled “An evaluation of the effectiveness of the use of multimedia and Wiley Plus web-based homework system in enhancing learning in the Chemical Engineering Extended Curriculum Program Physics course”, sharing teaching practices in the chemical engineering department ECP. The presentation was well received and created a debate on how we can integrate different multimedia technology in the classroom to achieve maximum student’s participation in and outside the classroom.

The main highlight of the presentations on Thursday for me was given by prof  Alfred Mvunyelwa Msomi titled” Transforming teaching and learning to accommodate student cultural backgrounds in a first year mathematics classroom at a University of Technology”. This was an interesting topic as it dealt with the current request/demand by “fees must fall” students protest movement on how we can decolonize curriculum with a special focus on south Africa and Africa as a whole. He demonstrated how mathematics can be taught accommodating student’s cultural background by making example and scenario that students can be able to relate to on their daily lives.