Mr Theo van der Vyver
An investment in tutor training has really paid off for students and an academic from the Department of Economics, Mr Theo van der Vyver, who recently received the prestigious International Education Faculty Achievement Award.
Conferred by the International Association of University Presidents (IAUP) the award recognises extraordinary achievement in curriculum development, service, and teaching to prepare world citizens. The IAUP was founded in 1964 with the aim of increasing the exchange of experiences, levels of collaboration and networking between university leaders across the globe. It also supports sustainable development in a context of global competency.
Mr van der Vyver is the coordinator of the Economics 1A (ECS1501) module and the first Unisa academic to receive such an honour.
According to Van der Vyver, staff members in the department used the available myUnisa platform and embarked on providing extensive training workshops to tutors in order to ensure good communication at departmental and regional level. “They have embraced the tutor model, where they currently have 90 e-tutors and 80 face-to-face tutors. They went the extra mile and introduced module-specific DVDs that cover the economics module content and include real examples and input from renowned economists. They also pursued the online route to teaching, making use of YouTube clips through their external website.
The format of the online teaching allows the tutors to conduct 20 minutes of teaching and gives the student an opportunity to do exercises after the lecture. The department also pioneered the first African glossary of terminology in order to translate economic concepts into South African languages, for easy understanding.”
“The feedback from students has been very positive,” said Van der Vyver. “The discussion classes have grown tremendously, with places like Mthatha recording an increase in the pass rate from 0% to 50% from 2009 to 2012. Our face-to-face tutorials have been so successful they have been expanded internationally to Ethiopia, Swaziland, and Lesotho.”
Here are some of the student comments:
A Saidi: “I would like to thank Mr T van der Vyver and all economics department staff. You have done your best to assist us in this module to the extent that if we fail, we only have ourselves to blame, especially those who attended satellite broadcasts, discussion classes and tutorials. Of all the modules I registered, economics has been the best in terms of student support. Keep it up.”
H Hodgkinson: “I have done my diploma through Unisa and am now busy with BCom. Not once in all the subjects I have done thus far, have I had such support from a lecturer. Slides, extra study notes, a DVD, a fantastic CD and an involvement in the forum. Thank you, Mr Van der Vyver.”
Natasha: “Hi there, I just wanted to say what a great job the Economics department is doing. We had so much guidance, encouragement, room for evaluating ourselves and feedback that if we failed it could only be due to our own capabilities or lack of studying.”
