Equity-Sensitive Strategies of Higher Education in South Africa: Internationalization@Home in Post-Pandemic Times

March 11, 2022
Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT)
Cape Town, South Africa
Virtual Event 
Final Report.pdf

The forum will address HE internationalization strategies and focus on one of the phases of internationalization@home that includes collaborative online international learning (COIL). The  case study presented by the host has the objective to advance institutional practices at universities in the Western Cape and technical universities throughout South Africa.

The initiative addresses both SDG 4 and Quality Education, focusing on Higher Education – and SDG 17 partnerships. 4IR and online learning in its multiple modality roll out-is embedded  in the politics of the have and have nots – therefore, cultural and economic inequalities should  ideally underpin 4IR interventions and hybrid plans of face to face and virtual teaching and learning in a post-pandemic world. New reality/normal/landscape - accelerated global pedagogical teaching methodologies, global/ cross border/ transnational/real-time transnational platforms - collaborations are new opportunities to address issues of access and inequalities, and ideologies to address SDGs and 2030 goals.

The forum will also serve to launch, pilot and thus validate the research agenda of the new research unit to be established at the host Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT), embedded within the Office of Strategic Initiatives and Partnerships (SIP). The research project consists of two phases which seek to reconfigure, define, and continue existing strategies and pedagogies in internationalization policies and practices by considering the following aspects: What is the role of the internationalization of Higher Education in its broad mandate to internationalize the curricula at home and abroad, on  staff and student mobility, research collaborations, or established and emerging summer school programs? In the first phase, it will answer the research questions of the level of alignment of institutional with national policies and the conceptual underpinnings, elements and reasons of  an institutional policy, as well as the stages and processes of implementation drawing on an institutional case study approach followed by analyzing the 4IR impacts on teaching and learning in the post-COVID-19 world.