Nicola Pallitt

• phd
• Lecturer at Rhodes University

The goal of liberating learners, educators, educational developers and other stakeholders within higher education from systemic oppression and institutional injustice is unattainable if we consider social justice, well-being, mental health and care/compassion separately. As a collective, we developed a model for compassionate learning design, which...

This paper develops a framework for design considerations that can be used to analyse or design networked professional development (NPD) in higher education (HE) contexts. The model was developed after reflecting on three professional development (PD) courses, each with facilitators who are academic developers across the African continent. Using a...

There is growing interest in the literature towards a more distributed, collaborative view of learning design that focuses on relationships and connection. In this paper, we propose a vision of learning design that is entangled and crosses boundaries, framed by an equity-oriented mindset that blurs and resists boundaries, and merges learning design...

This chapter offers an overview of dominant educational technology research paradigms, how they conceptualise the relationship between humans and technology and situate the researcher. As such, it aims to provide an introduction for scholars who may be new to postdigital research, as well as those who are more familiar with the postdigital paradigm...

This paper draws on a larger study where 34 women practising and supporting equity-oriented learning design across the world were interviewed in early 2021. The paper highlights the strategies learning designers use to navigate clashes between their own values and those held by their institutions. The authors argue that positionality, institutional...

During the pandemic, the pivot to emergency remote teaching highlighted the depth and extent of inequalities, particularly in relation to access to resources and literacies, faced by higher education institutions. Imported solutions that failed to take into consideration the constraints and cultures of local contexts were less than successful. The...

The term as below Emergency Remote Teaching (ERT) has been adopted worldwide. In practice, approaches to ERT have been contextual with diverse lecturer and student experiences owing to complex assemblages of sociomaterial practices. Approaches to ERT as mobile learning by necessity are understudied. The ‘pivot' to ERT was particularly challenging f...

This chapter develops a framework for design considerations that can be used to analyze, contrast, and design networked professional development (NPD) in higher education (HE) contexts. The framework was developed after reflecting on three professional development (PD) courses, each with facilitators who are academic developers across the African c...

Since the turn of this century, much of the world has undergone tectonic socio technological change. Computers have left the isolated basements of research institutes and entered people’s homes. Network connectivity has advanced from slow and unreliable modems to high-speed broadband. Devices have evolved: from stationary desktop computers to ever-...

When the COVID-19 pandemic started African Higher Education Institutions were unevenly prepared for the suspension of face to face teaching. This resulted in a variety of responses including business as usual for some distance learning institutions, rushed preparation for the pivot online using an established learning management system, improvisati...

Produced from experiences at the outset of the intense times when Covid-19 lockdown restrictions began in March 2020, this collaborative paper offers the collective reflections and analysis of a group of teaching and learning and Higher Education (HE) scholars from a diverse 15 of the 26 South African public universities. In the form of a theorised...

Higher education institutions (HEIs) across the globe have turned to online technologies in a bid to address the unprecedented disruption to their educational function, created by physical restrictions implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic. Educators, learning professionals, administrators, managers - all have had to muster the courage and deter...

This paper develops a framework for design considerations that can be used to analyse or design networked professional development (NPD) in higher education (HE) contexts. The model was developed after reflecting on three professional development (PD) courses, each with facilitators who are academic developers across the African continent. Using a...

10. Belluigi, D, Czerniewicz, l., Khoo, S, Algers, A., Buckley, L.A., Prinsloo, P., Mgqwashu, E.M, Camps, C., Brink, C., Marx, R., Wissing, G., Pallitt, N. (2020). Needs Must”? Critical reflections on the implications of the Covid19 ‘pivot online’ for equity in higher education. Digital Culture and Education (ISSN: 1836-8301).

As a group of international researchers interested in the role of educational technology in higher education in Africa, we decided to collaborate in action research about educational technology usage in Africa to strengthen our understandings of the systems that influence and enable educational technology usage across the continent. This research c...

Students enrolled in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) globally and in South Africa are generally not in a state of well-being. International and South African research studies show that undergraduate STEM programmes pose significant challenges to students and that many STEM programmes are marked by high attrition rates and po...

Enrolments in STEM disciplines at universities are increasing globally, attributed to the greater life opportunities open to students as a result of a STEM education. But while institutional access to STEM programmes is widening, the retention and success of STEM undergraduate students remains a challenge. Pedagogies that support student success ar...

While blended and online learning are increasingly becoming a prominent feature of higher education in Africa, there is little related formal research on learning design as a field of study, a profession, a process or a product. This collaborative research is motivated by an interest in sharing and improving practices around learning design. The pa...

Teaching portfolios have become increasingly important to university teachers. Portfolio requirements for the appointment or promotion of academic staff recognize that the assessment of teaching practice requires more depth and detail than a candidate's academic CV generally affords. The focus of this study is the electronic teaching portfolios, de...

Introduction to ePortfolios: Definition and characteristics Radical changes in information and communication technologies (ICTs) in the past few years have had a direct impact on thinking about learning, pedagogy, theory and learning outcomes (Jimoyiannis 2012). Local and international trends in higher education emphasise the notion of student-cen...

Game theorist Roger Caillois introduces his classic discussion of the pleasures of “mimicry” or playful performance with a short vignette showing how children imitate adult behavior through play: For children, the aim is to imitate adults. This explains the success of the toy weapons and miniatures which copy the tools, engines, arms, and machines...

The University of Cape Town offers a co-curricular Global Citizenship programme providing students with opportunities to engage critically with contemporary global debates and reflect on issues of citizenship and social justice. The required learning activities include writing blog posts on the course site, participating in voluntary community serv...

Discussions of ‘game literacy’ focus on the informal learning and literacies associated with games but seldom address the diversity in young people's gaming practices, and the highly differentiated technologies of digital gaming in use. We use available survey data to show how, in South Africa, income inequalities influence consumption patterns, sh...