The health of University students is important as these individuals are central to the future economic sector. Since HIV/AIDS is a major public health threat in South Africa (SA), it is vital to develop health initiatives that aim to reduce the HIV prevalence rate among youth and to promote positive health behaviour. Voluntary Counselling and Testing (VCT) is one such initiative. The National Department of Health (NDoH) recently implemented the „First Things First‟ campaign that aims to promote VCT among youth. In line with the NDoH‟s initiative, this study explored the factors that shape attitudes towards VCT among first year students at the University of the Witwatersrand (WITS). This study was conducted using a combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods. The respondents included 195 first year students out of approximately 220 who participated in a survey and two key informants in the field of HIV/AIDS whom I interviewed. With regards to ethical considerations, the study protected the respondent‟s rights by maintaining anonymity of all survey participants and exercised care that the human rights of individuals and the reputation of WITS as an institution were safeguarded. Based on conceptual models of health behaviour, the study identified factors that shaped students responses to VCT. The results of this study indicate that youth at WITS go for VCT mainly to know their HIV status. This is being triggered by them knowing someone who has either; been for VCT, is living with HIV or passed away due to AIDS. In addition, the free availability and easy accessibility of VCT services on campus and the positive influence of peers through social mobilisation were regarded as key motivations for students accessing VCT. However, some students seem to not access VCT services due to personal fears of rejection, blame and discrimination if they were to be found HIV-positive. The gendered dynamics and nature of clinics together with the poor attitudes of some health service providers were also major barriers to VCT uptake among youth. The findings conclude that many students know that VCT is a necessary and beneficial process. It also found that there are multiple factors that work together in complex ways to shape the reasons why youth choose to „test‟ or not to „test‟ for HIV.

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This piece is an empirical study of how students experience and conceptualise internationalisation of higher education at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), South Africa. The central question of this empirical study is, how do students experience and conceptualise internationalisation of higher education at Wits? The conceptual framework presents Wits within three domains, which are the Official, Pedagogical and Social, as the context within which the university operates. Using a qualitative methodology – phenomenography – that aims to explore the qualitatively different ways in which a group of people experience a specific phenomenon, in this case internationalisation of higher education, four main constructs about internationalisation have emerged from students’ accounts: (I) internationalisation as Wits is striving to be a top global university; (II) internationalisation as the presence of international students; (III) internationalisation as an issue of mutual respect and acceptance, and (IV) internationalisation as enhancing the students’ learning experience. The argument is that, though students converge on these conceptions, their differences regarding the emphasis and significance points to a scenario of unbalanced institutional mediation, with strong mediation within the logic of dominant pedagogical practice in the university, constrained by forms of weak mediation in the social domain.

Student Number : 0009222T - MA research report - School of Human and Community Development - Faculty of Humanities / The aim of this exploratory study was to determine whether victims of crime who have encountered face-to-face interventions with lay counsellors, perceive these interventions as helpful, hindering or having no effect on their ability to cope after a traumatic incident. Five participants were selected for this qualitative study. A semi-structured interview schedule was constructed by the researcher to guide the interview process and thematic content analysis was used to analyse the data. The main emergent themes related to symptoms experienced by participants, time, victim support centres, perceptions of lay counsellors, short-term interventions, the model used and the participants overall perceptions of the services rendered by lay counsellors. Although the results were too varied to conclude the perceived effectiveness of interventions, the results are invaluable in gaining an in-depth understanding of the perceived impact of the services rendered by lay counsellors and what factors influence these perceptions.

In 1979, the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) and the Standard Bank Investment Corporation came together to form the Standard Bank Foundation Collection of African Tribal Art, the first public collection of its kind in South Africa, which fundamentally re-shaped public and institutional perceptions of black art in the country. Its collection and display, at first in the Gertrude Posel Gallery and then in the Wits Art Museum, formed a canon of African art that represented the artistic identities of a larger continent as well as those of South Africa’s majority black population. Together these formed an explicit political statement. This dissertation traces the evolution of the Standard Bank Collection, examining key developments at critical moments in South Africa’s political history. Divided into two parts that juxtapose the apartheid and post-apartheid periods, the first section begins with the founding of the Standard Bank Collection and its inaugural exhibition, African Tribal Sculpture held in 1979. In Chapter One, a case study considers how Wits placed black South African objects in dialogue with the canonical sculpture from West and Central Africa. Wits thereby authenticated black South African objects as art, both in South Africa itself and within the field of African art history, an action that undermined the apartheid system. Chapter Two offers a second case study that takes on the racially charged climate of late apartheid, situating Wits’ collecting practices in relationship to the collections and exhibitions of other art museums in the country. Wits curators employed and politicized the labels traditional art and transitional art in their classifications of South African objects at a critical juncture in the nation’s political transformation. Part two looks at the post-apartheid period in a single case study. Chapter Three examines the politics present in exhibitions featuring African art in the new Wits Art Museum that addressed themes relevant to popular urban culture – including style, fashion, and adornment – viewed as central to the presentation of post-apartheid black identities. By examining the types of objects Wits collected and the kinds of exhibitions it mounted, this dissertation illuminates how the art museum’s cultural authority represented and grappled with the changing racial politics of the nation.

Tutoring is one of the most effective instruction methods. Computer as an Intelligent Tutor is an area of research since many decades. Technology advancement in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) can be used in developing Web – based Intelligent Tutoring System (WITS), which provides individualized tutoring at the same time to large number of students geographically distributed. Intelligent Tutoring System requires knowledge representation of expert, student and instructional strategy. While web technology promises many attractive features to build web based ITS, it would still be a challenge to represent knowledge objects that are scalable, reusable and platform independent. It is required to derive generalized knowledge representation framework which can be used in developing WITS for many courses. This research work proposes an instruction System Design (ISD) model based framework in development of WITS for Control Systems. ADDIE model is selected in development of WITS. Front end analysis is conducted to identify the learning goals of a course. Proposed research work presents a Bloom - Vincenti framework for preparing learning objectives for engineering courses. Problem Based Learning (PBL) is selected as instruction strategy. Then it presents an ontology based knowledge representation framework for expert module, tutoring module, and student module. Ontology for expert module is proposed on the course structure, instruction system, instruction material ontology, and Bloom – Vincenti Taxonomy. Ontology for student module is also proposed on course structure and Bloom – Vincenti Taxonomy. Tutoring module consists of ontology about the facts of the instruction material and rule base based on the categories of engineering knowledge (Vincenti) and cognitive skill (Bloom’s Taxonomy). Proposed way of knowledge representation supports scalability, and reusability. Prototype Web – based Intelligent Tutoring System for first level course on Control Systems is developed. JAVA technology used in development of Web – based Intelligent Tutoring System (WITS), makes WITS platform independent. Web – based Intelligent Tutoring System for Control Systems is deployed at laboratory level and its efficacy is tested for first two modules of a course.