Innovative online classrooms and smartboards are transforming teaching and learning at DUT’s Fashion Department on the Brickfield Campus. Under the leadership of Department Head, Sunthra Moodley, Fashion lecturers are moving to online delivery as an integral part of their teaching practice. Lecturers Fezile Mdletshe, Kaila Goss and Suheena Singh (pictured here) along with Tando Mbanga and Bianca Van Rooyen are providing their students with learning materials and instructional videos on the university’s Blackboard LMS.
Fashion and Multimedia lead online video teaching at DUT
A collaborative venture by Fashion Design and DUT Multimedia has shown how teaching videos can be successfully incorporated into online classrooms. Working closely with Nelson Munsamy and his Multimedia team, Fashion lecturer Kaila Goss has started using instructional videos in her Blackboard classroom. These new fashion videos are in line with international best practice. Salman Khan (of Khan Academy) has attracted world acclaim for using teaching videos as a key ingredient of quality online education, providing students with step-by-step instruction that can be paused, re-played and reviewed to suit the learning style of each individual student.
As Kaila wrote to Keith Kenneth of Multimedia: “Great news! I showed the first 2 videos to my first class today and they were very positive about it. I had some really good feedback from them, and they even asked who made it because it looks so professionally done.They said it makes patterns so much easier to understand because they can see it up close. From my side, it seemed to help get the concepts across to students much faster, so I had more time to work with them on their practical class work. So a big thank you to you and the team!”
Confucius Institute Online
The Confucius Institute’s Online classroom for learning Mandarin is due to open in February. At the recent Confucius Institute Conference held in Beijing, access to the new site was confirmed for early in 2014 to coincide with the arrival of the CI Dean and teaching staff at DUT. At the Beijing conference, Prof Graham Stewart addressed delegates on progress with the E-Learning Project at DUT.