Cameroon university students are drawn to informal small group talks as a highly valued learning strategy, particularly in relation to assessment. This research investigates this practice in-depth as an ‘instance in action,' with academic, social and cultural implications in the life of the average university learner in Cameroon. Showing the methodological limitations of current discourses on student group talks in higher education teaching and learning, the study draws from bakhtinian ‘dialogism' to underpin analysis of students' talks and interactions. Data were collected through extended observation of several small groups in three different universities in Cameroon, across several disciplinary fields, levels of undergraduate learning, linguistic and social boundaries. Findings suggest that in the process of talking and interacting informally, that is, outside of the formal structure of the classroom, learners strategically position themselves in ways that allow their individual and collective voices to emerge. Sustained in the context of discourse, emerging voices create the dialogic space within which learners con-struct their understandings of disciplinary knowledge. For it is within the dialogic space that learners, through their voices, best relate to assessment demands, to expected learning outcomes and to the social and cultural contexts of learning in Cameroon. This work contributes to knowledge by underlining the importance of learning spaces in higher education, particularly in relation to learners' voices and expected active engagement with learning. As such, it highlights the potentials of informal collaborative learning to enhance the learning experience in Cameroon universities, particularly in relation to assessment and critical thinking. Hence, it provides grounds for claims that Cameroonian students, and generally learners in other similar contexts, are usually more independent thinkers. This offers reasonable basis for questioning existing presumptions around ‘academic inferiority' of ‘foreign' students in some institutions abroad; presumptions that have continued to widen existing gaps between western universities and competing institutions in developing contexts. In addition, it foregrounds subsequent inquiries on learners' identities in Cameroon universities. Methodological innovations in investigating unconventional learning practices, particularly with the use of information technology, are also highlighted.

Research universities broadly have integrated scientific research as a core component of their teaching mission and are frequently the source of technological innovation. The University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) likewise, seeks to give effect to its vision of being the premier university of African scholarship in its research endeavors and is currently ranked as one of the “Big Five” research institutions in South Africa. However, despite UKZN’s high research publication output, there is negligible patenting at UKZN. This study therefore investigated why there is that anomaly and carried out a Comparative Analysis of Innovation Support Models at Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in South Africa. Based on the research findings, this study provides some useful insights on how Innovation Support Models in South Africa in general and UKZN in particular, can best be structured to achieve success. The study highlights the extent to which patenting affects publication (for example whether patenting hinders publication) with particular emphasis on the “Big Five” research universities in South Africa. Some of the factors that affect innovation at the HEIs, which this study reviewed, include the institutional arrangements for the management of Intellectual Property and technology transfer capacity. The study reviews literature on the roles that universities play in the national innovation systems, the complex institutional landscapes that influence the creation, development and dissemination of innovations at global and national levels. The literature shows that countries worldwide, including South Africa, are striving to stimulate innovation as a fundamental source of competitiveness and are building on locally generated Intellectual Property (IP) from Research Institutions. To arrive at the findings, this study adopted a case study approach by examining innovation at UKZN in some detail. Purposive sampling was used to select the “Big Five” research institutions and an additional three HEIs were selected through judgment sampling. Out of a sample size of eight HEIs, a response rate of 75% was achieved. The case study and the interview analysis showed that HEIs use more than one indicator to measure their performance. These indicators include: the number of disclosures, number of patents, number of breakthroughs to the industry, number of projects managed within the innovation portfolio, the level of efficiency of innovation systems and tools, successful commercialisation of projects and the income generated. While there are several good innovation performance indicators, this study recommends the patent system, which is accepted internationally as a good yardstick and is used in South Africa by the Department of Science and Technology to monitor technological performance. Patents are valuable because they provide a researcher with a coherent set of data across countries and specific technological fields for long time series. Proper use of the patent system could result in additional publications to the researchers and could facilitate the transfer of new technology to the industry. Despite delays in obtaining patents, the patent system has the benefit of securing the researchers with a priority date for their work. This study further shows that there is a low rate of patenting by South African HEIs at both local and international level. The existence of IP management policies at HEIs and patenting appears to be correlated given the fact that HEIs with IP policies and established structures performed well in the area of patenting. Improvement of infrastructure and availability of highly skilled and creative researchers coupled with proper management of IP is necessary for successful commercialisation. A useful tool for enhancing commercialisation would be a mechanism for increasing the number of disclosures of inventions made by researchers to technology transfer offices. This study therefore recognizes that achieving research and innovation excellence in South African HEIs, especially in UKZN, requires breaking down existing barriers within and outside the institutions while building a collaborative and entrepreneurial culture. / Thesis (MBA)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Westville, 2009.

M.Ed. / The problem of academic performance standards among first year students is cause for concern for many tertiary institutions. The incidence of failure and attrition is unacceptably high, primarily because of the repercussions not only on the institutions concerned, but also on the individual students who drop out of those institutions feeling bewildered and frustrated ...

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Technology in Public Management, Durban University of Technology, Durban, South Africa, 2015. / This study aimed to investigate the factors influencing the career progression of women in higher education in general and South Africa in particular, using the case study of the Durban University of Technology. Recent research has shown that even though women have made some progress as compared to where they were twenty years ago, the progress of women has proven to be resistant to change in terms of higher level and rewarding positions (Turner 2012; Hofmeyr and Mzobe 2012; Botool and Sajid 2013; Mouley, 2013). According to Boushey and Farrell (2013:6), this lack of progress results from a lack of flexibility and unpredictable scheduling at the workplace. Others argue that career interruption for childbirth and rearing; domestic responsibilities; gender parities at the work place; organizational structures; and policies that do not meet the needs of female employees affect career progress (Wallace and Smith 2011:3 and Tsoka 2010:6). The purpose of the study was, therefore, to examine the nature of the progress of women in higher education, and to identify factors influencing their progress. The study was conducted at the Durban University of Technology with a sample of 250 women from academic and administrative units the stratified random sampling technique was used, in which the target population at the DUT was grouped into different strata, and then the sample elements were selected from each of the groups. The study used both quantitative and qualitative research designs (mixed method), whereby self-administered questionnaires were used to collect the data. The questionnaire consisted of open-ended and closed ended questions. The closed- ended questions were quantitative, while the open ended questions were qualitative. The closed-ended responses were then analysed using SPSS, while the open ended responses used the inductive approach to highlight the factors influencing the career progression of women in higher education, thereby leading to recommendations on policies which would enhance career progression of women in higher education. The findings of the research revealed that women are still underrepresented in higher. It was recommended that management should improve working conditions for women and ensure that the effective monitoring and evaluation of the various policies in place.

The selection of textbooks used at tertiary institutions in South Africa, in the discipline of Accounting, is an area where there is a lack of published studies. Factors citied by academics for selecting prescribed textbooks are the cost of the textbooks, comprehensive coverage of relevant topics and applicability to the South African context. Other criteria, such as readability, are often not taken into consideration. Students feel that the prescribed textbooks are prescribed for the wrong reasons and find them difficult to read and learn from. The research reviews the Managerial Accounting and Finance (MAF) textbooks used at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) and other universities. Observations about the textbooks, from staff and students are considered from interviews. / Thesis (M.Ed. (Department of Education)) - University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2008.

Higher education in South Africa faces severe challenges due to the under preparedness of many students entering the system. Research (Perkins 1991; Pretorius 2000, 2005; Balfour 2002) has shown that many students who enter higher education do not have the required academic literacy knowledge and strategies to engage meaningfully with the relevant texts in their disciplines. A major obstacle to students’ success is their limited reading strategies. A significantly large number of students are not able to read at the appropriate grade and/or age level. Yet, reading is one of the most important academic tasks encountered by students. This thesis focuses on the use of reading strategy interventions together with integrated reading/writing activities to enhance reading comprehension. The study is located at the Durban University of Technology, using as participants the students who were registered on the first year extended Dental Technology programme in 2004. The interventions are implemented through an action research project. The piloting phase of the interventions reveals the need for an understanding of the students’ backgrounds in, amongst others, their reading and writing practices, attitudes, approaches to learning, and motivational factors. Consequently, the action research project was conducted in parallel with an ethnographic inquiry into students’ reading worlds and practices. Given that reading and writing are complementary processes whereby the enhancement of the one has a positive effect on the other, the ethnographic inquiry also explores students’ attitudes and practices towards writing. Using the ideological model (Street 1984) and, in particular, the new literacy approach to teaching and learning as a framework for the thesis, I argue that the students’ early childhood and schooling experiences of reading and writing impact on their current attitudes and practices. I further suggest that for children from disadvantaged backgrounds learning and retaining literacy is more difficult than for children from advantaged, middle class backgrounds. The ethnographic inquiry involved a series of interviews with students, as well as a questionnaire to ascertain students’ attitudes and practices towards reading and writing. In addition, a questionnaire was designed for lecturers to obtain their attitudes and practices towards reading and writing in their disciplines. A major finding of the ethnographic inquiry was that the majority of participants in the study come from a background that can be described as traditionally oral in the sense that it is one in which very little or no emphasis is placed on reading. For some participants story telling was a more common form of interaction or communication with the elders. Also, the majority of participants come from lower socio-economic backgrounds where the purchasing of reading materials is considered a luxury. In addition, for many of the English additional language students, their school environment and experiences were not adequate enough to foster the need for reading and/or any engagement in reading. Based on my research, as well as the findings of other researchers, I argue that reading strategy interventions are essential in order to raise awareness and promote the use of reading strategies so as to enhance the learning (reading) process. The review of literature on reading development and the findings from the interviews indicate that the explicit teaching of reading strategies is essential for students who come from disadvantaged backgrounds (Heath 1983; Delpit 1986; Cope and Kalantzis 1993). To this end the action research component of the study was implemented through the explicit teaching of three reading strategies, namely, identifying the main idea in a paragraph, using context clues to guess the meaning of unknown words in a text, and summarization. The focus of the intervention was on the process and on raising students’ levels of metacognitive awareness. The approach is novel in two ways. First, via the process approach to reading the chosen reading strategies were initially taught independently to the students using the explicit explanation approach which involved scaffolded tasks involving explanations, modeling (using the think-aloud protocol), practice, and transfer exercises. Thereafter, using the cognitive apprenticeship approach, students were taught to use all three strategies simultaneously during reading. Second, discipline specific materials were used as reading sources during the interventions which were conducted with integrated reading/writing activities. Data was collected by means of a language proficiency pre-and post-test, a reading strategy pre-and post-test, worksheets, student reflective pieces, portfolios, and observations. An analysis of the pre-and post-test data showed that the reading strategy interventions were highly successful. Students performed better in the reading strategy post-test than in the pre-test. Furthermore, their performance was better than that of a control group of students who were registered for the first year mainstream programme and who wrote only the reading strategy post-test. A marked improvement was also noted in the language proficiency post-test. These results stress the need for the teaching of reading strategies through integrated reading and writing activities. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2006.

Dr. M. Gous Ms. N. Murdoch

M. Tech. Business Information Systems / A Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) enables teaching and learning pedagogy that allows students to study without geographical barriers and time constraints. VLE promotes innovations in institutions of higher learning and encourages lecturers and students to move away from the face-to-face learning method to virtual learning pedagogy. The ability to learn anywhere, any time (which is what VLE is all about) was found to be the most appealing. Furthermore, VLE enables institutions of higher learning to enrol large numbers of students without having to worry about the size of the classroom. Global learning, as well as collaboration between leaners and lecturers is encouraged and supported through VLEs. Although institutions of higher learning spend huge amounts of money on technologies such as VLE, most VLEs are still not contextualized to cater for the needs of students in developing countries such as South Africa. This leads to the VLEs in developing countries not being effectively utilised. This study aims at designing a contextualized VL model that suits South African institutions of higher learning. The study identifies factors necessary for contextualizing VLE to fit the student's perspective in a developing country (in this case, South Africa).

A research report submitted to the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Sociology, 2017 / Since the debut of democracy, there has been an increase in the number of historically marginalised Black students in South Africa’s higher education institutions. However, this has not been accompanied by a corresponding success rate. Higher education’s response to this success crisis has largely been academic development programs. While extensive research has been done on academic development programs, more especially quantitative research in disciplines like maths, natural sciences, and economics, not much qualitative research has been done on extracurricular academic development programs in the humanities and the social sciences. In this study, I explore the role of the Reaching for Excellence and Achievement Program (REAP) in students’ journeys graduation. REAP is an extracurricular academic development program at the University of the Witwatersrand. The findings show that students from disadvantaged backgrounds are not a homogeneous group and that this influences the types of challenges that they encounter at university. They show that REAP played a significant role in facilitating these students’ progress to graduation. They also reveal that academic development programs by themselves are not enough to address the success crisis facing students from disadvantaged backgrounds because the root causes of some of the challenges they encounter can only be addressed at a structural level. Based on the lessons learned from the findings of this study, I make recommendations for future academic development programming. Keywords: Access, Success, Academic Development, Under-preparedness, Educational Inequality, Higher Education / GR2018

Thesis presented for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Business Science, Human Resources Management) in the Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, June 2017 / For the past two years, South Africa has been gripped by a spate of demonstrations by university students demanding free university education. These demonstrations have been violent, and mediation efforts have not succeeded in yielding long-term results. According to the theory of rising expectations, in an economy that is improving and where the people are not oppressed, their expectations often outstrip the pace of actual change (Gale, 2008). When there is a mismatch between what people expect and what they actually get, theory suggests that rising expectations lead to civil unrest as demands for improvement continue to grow. It is the contention of this thesis that the theory of rising expectations is associated with the behaviour of the university students as they make demands for free education, better employment opportunities and more accountability from the government. Also associated with the behaviour of these university students in South Africa is generational cohort theory, which predicts that certain significant national and global events have a long-lasting impact on value systems of individual groups and social orders resulting in the formation of new generational cohorts (Smolla & Sutton, 2002). These individuals then share enduring distinctive sets of values, beliefs, and behaviours (Strauss & Howe, 2000). Furthermore, research suggests that Generation Y are materialistic, which is the value individuals place on possessions (Belk, 1985), have a high entitlement mentality, and their work values are mostly extrinsic. Entitlement has been defined as a “pervasive sense that one deserves more and is entitled to more than others” (Campbell, Bonacci, Shelton, Exline, & Bushman, 2004, p. 31). In the absence of literature that relates to the potential influence of the theory of rising expectations and generational cohort theory on the behaviour of Generation Y in South Africa, this research seeks to: (i) investigate whether Generation Y are indeed materialistic and entitled; (ii) investigate the potential influence of demographic factors on work centrality, work values, materialism, and an entitlement mentality; (iii) investigate the potential influence of work centrality, work values, and materialism on an entitlement mentality; and (iv) investigate the mediating effect of materialism on the relationship between demographic factors, work values, work centrality, and an entitlement mentality in the context of a private college and a public university in South Africa. This research employed a two-stage approach. The first stage, a quantitative study, applied a descriptive approach to validate and justify the research findings that link Generation Y with materialism and entitlement mentality. Entitlement mentality was measured using two dimensions: exploitative and nonexploitative entitlement. Based on a literature review, a model was then developed and tested in the second stage of the study using Structural Equation Modelling. Findings from Stage Two suggested that Generation Y are materialistic and highly entitled, but that their entitlement is non-exploitative. Men were found to be more materialistic than women, but women were found to be more entitled than men. However, both genders were found to have low levels of exploitative entitlement, albeit with men showing slightly higher levels of exploitative entitlement. Gender and age were also significantly associated with materialism and entitlement. However, gender and age were found not to be significantly associated with work centrality. Work centrality was found to be significantly associated with entitlement mentality. Work values, on the other hand, were found not to be significantly associated with entitlement mentality, but were significantly associated with materialism. Materialism was found to be significantly associated with entitlement mentality. On the basis of all of these results, it was concluded that the theory of rising expectations and generational cohort theory might be responsible for the entitlement mentality and materialism, which literature often associates with Generation Y. The results also suggested that for organisations to attract and retain Generation Y employees, managers need to pay attention to extrinsic aspects of the job, such as pay. / XL2018