My teaching philosophy was born out of my own life experiences. Growing up I realised that I learnt differently to others; combining visual learning, audio learning and having to go through numerous examples to prepare myself for tests and examinations. Through this personal experience, I learnt the importance of using a number of techniques to facilitate learning as well as the realisation that every single person is unique and therefore will learn in their own unique way.
I have a passion for blended learning as it allows students the ability to continuously learn no matter where they are and at any time. Moodle, Nelson Mandela University’s online learning platform, allows me to track my students’ progress through a variety of activities such as quizzes and small tests. Moodle allows me to monitor my students’ results and implement strategies to assist them with any work that they did not fully grasp in my face-to face lectures. I have also been very interested in investigating how to improve my students’ academic literacies. I have focused specifically on reading literacies as the modules I teach require a lot of reading and interpretation of case studies.
I also realised how many students struggled to obtain access to a device that allows them to access online activities when not on campus. I developed from this a principle of the R5 Moodle site which keeps all graphics and videos to a minimum with the focus being on ensuring the Moodle activities (Quiz’s, slides, reading materials) are kept mainly to text to lower the cost of downloading to stay as low as possible. The hyperlinks, which enable students to view interesting articles on course-based topics, were at the students’ choice and could be downloaded when they were in a Wi-Fi zone at one of the municipal libraries or a Nelson Mandela University partner study site. The R5 Moodle principle was born out of feedback I had received from my student’s during the Fees must fall protests when my students did not have a lot of money to spend on downloading the necessary files they needed to complete their modules assessments. I therefore wanted to find a way for my students to access only the content they needed for as little as R5 airtime on their phones.
I try and be a model to my students through my work and actions and create a learning environment that enables my students to also excel in what they do, which I believe I create using my blended learning techniques. Through the use of additional material (hyperlinks) and making cutting edge knowledge available to my students in the form of hot topics as well as the questions I ask my students in class I try to develop their critical thinking. This will enable my students to have different viewpoints to examine a situation.
