Mandla Mantshongo, Tabile Loqo & Mawethu Ngeleshe

Last Tuesday, 28 November 2017, the ECP Unit hosted colleagues from the Extended Curriculum Programme at Walter Sisulu University. Tabile Logo, WSU Institutional ECP Coordinator mentioned that her interest in discussing how CPUT manages its ECP grant funds  promoted the request to visit our institution and meet with key ECP roleplayers. Tabile was accompanied by Mandla Mantshongo (Finance Manager for all DHET grants) and Mawethu Ngeleshe (ECP Accountant). Discussions commenced in the morning with staff in the ECP Unit and then later ECP leaders across CPUT joined for a more dialogical engagement where best practices at individual faculty and department levels could be shared and discussed.

Tabile shared some informative details about the ECP offering at WSU. Currently WSU has 26 programmes across four campuses that service a total of 2770 students. All their programmes  implement the extended model. They were keen to hear about our differentiated approach to the implementation of the ECP models – the approach taken at CPUT is to allow departments and faculties to ultilise curriculum structures that best suit the specific educational needs of the department and students concerned. Some of the main take-aways or gems from our interaction over the day were; the detailed and direct financial control mechanisms used to oversee the whole Extended Programme Grant by the Institutional ECP Coordinator and the direct contact created between ECP students and the Institutional ECP Coordinator, through their semester-based programme review activities.  Colleagues from both institutions appreciated the opportunity to meet face-to-face and share practices and approaches linked to implementing ECP at our very different institutions. Plans are underway to extend and solidify these collegial interactions.