Page 33 - UniZulu Annual Report 2020

STRATEGIC GOAL 3: Enhance Research and
Innovation
UNIZULU plans to position itself within this reality of being a rural comprehensive teaching university to increase its research output and postgraduate enrolments, enhance community engagement and improve the experience of postgraduate students. UNIZULU has, during the year under review, developed and established numerous enablers and mechanisms to drive and enhance continuing education. The Research Office continued to provide a large number of capacity development training workshops and programmes to the academic staff and students. This includes research proposal development, research ethics, academic writing workshops, research design workshops and supervision training. The focus is mainly to strengthen emerging researchers with a strong emphasis on the empowerment of African women. To this end, a total number of 28 female researchers have been enrolled in the University Staff Doctoral Programme and the South African Technology Network. The aim is not only to enhance the number of academics with doctoral qualifications but also to ensure that capacity is developed to deliver a greater sense of tangible quality, stability and an enabling context that would lead to better succession planning of academic leadership. There is an undisputed link between doctoral qualifications, the improvement of quality and the number of research
outputs. UNIZULU has currently 50% of its full-time equivalent academics with doctoral qualifications. A total of 22 academic promotions were approved by Council in March 2020, of which 12 were female academics.
All four faculties implemented e-learning strategies as part of the objective to provide a supportive learning and teaching environment for UNIZULU Students. Training for trainers of Moodle on the use of Znanja (software used to convert paper-based materials to online materials) was also conducted. An E-Learning Committee was established, chaired by the Director of ICT, where lecturers who are champions of online teaching and learning were representing the interests of their faculties. The different pieces of training assisted academics to align the instruction processes guided by theories of learning, from formulating lesson outcomes that are National Qualifications Framework (NQF) level compliant, through facilitation as well as assessments strategies that are curriculum-aligned in terms of learning outcomes and assessment.
The University remains committed to ensuring the success of students through a customised First-Year Experience (FYE) programme. This includes first-year students in their living and learning spaces, tracking students to ensure that those who are at risk receive timeous support, tutoring students in small groups to reinforce their learning and enabling reading and writing workshops to enhance their academic writing skills. The emphasis remained on
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UNIVERSITY OF ZULULAND ANNUAL REPORT 2020