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Unisa students urged to participate in quality assurance and enhancement matters

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Staff and students attending the workshop

The Student Engagement in Quality Assurance and Student Support (SEQASS) project, led by the Department of Quality Assurance and Enhancement (DQAE), aims to encourage students to play a meaningful and impactful role in quality assurance and enhancement across the university. As part of this initiative, the College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences (CAES) was tasked with coordinating a student quality workshop at the Port Shepstone Techno Hub in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) for students from the college on 5 and 6 August 2025.

The motto for the workshop, "Nothing about the students, without students", was spontaneously coined by Pinkie Ndlovu, Campus Manager of the Pietermaritzburg Campus, who welcomed the participants on behalf of the Regional Director: KZN. She noted that the workshop was long overdue, emphasising that students, who are the primary recipients of the university’s services, should be given a platform to provide feedback about service delivery, and to influence the type and quality of services offered.

The workshop aimed to promote understanding of quality assurance, increase student participation in quality practices, identify challenges that students face in their learning journey and determine future support needs to ensure quality services.

The workshop highlighted that students’ active participation is crucial for the university to respond meaningfully with relevant and practical solutions. The goal is to ensure that engagement with students is not simply a "box-ticking exercise" but a genuine effort to produce tangible results.

According to Refiloe Tsephe, SEQASS Project Coordinator, the university launched this initiative as part of the broader Council on Higher Education (CHE) improvement plan, designed to enhance university services and to create a learning environment "where no one student will be left behind".

Unisa, as a comprehensive open distance e-learning (CODeL) institution, currently has close to 400 000 registered students, making it the largest university in Africa by enrolment and one of the few "mega universities" worldwide. The scale of student numbers presents challenges regarding student engagement, particularly because of the physical distance between students and the university. However, technology-supported e-learning helps to bridge this gap.

The SEQASS workshops have been rolled out across different colleges and regions to accommodate Unisa's vast student body. At the Port Shepstone event, guest speakers included Prof Lumkile Lalendle, Prof Itumeleng Setlhodi, Dr Florence Malongane, Queeneth Molefe, Zone Mdledle, Ralimpho Leuta and Penelope Nkosi. They encouraged students to remain committed to their studies and to pursue success through ethical and legitimate means, whether using traditional resources or modern tools such as artificial intelligence (AI).

Students, in turn, voiced strong concerns about service delivery, particularly the lack of responsiveness to queries about their studies and administrative matters. They emphasised that the university has a duty to respond to queries timeously, regardless of their nature or timing. Students urged the university to improve its communication, noting that non-responsiveness negatively affects them and, in extreme cases, may even drive some to harmful actions out of frustration. They stressed that if the university is serious about improving service delivery to its most important stakeholders – the students – it should begin by strengthening its communication with them.

The SEQASS project is proving to be a valuable platform for genuine student involvement in quality matters, supporting Unisa’s commitment to being a caring and inclusive institution. The long-term goal is to include the Student Representative Council (SRC) in the university’s quality governance structures at the institutional level, while also appointing student quality champions across colleges and regions.

* By Siyabonga Seme, Manager: Communication and Marketing, KwaZulu-Natal Region

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Publish date: 2025-09-03 00:00:00.0

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