Page 22 - Teaching Innovation for the 21st Century

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Teaching Innovation for the 21st Century | Showcasing UJ Teaching and Learning 2021
Storytelling does not only immerse the student in the moment and context but also provides the opportunity to develop language skills, demonstrate
difficult social problems, and provide mutually beneficial meaning-making opportunities.
Meet Roelien Brink (Department of Applied Information Systems, Faculty of Commerce), Elton Romeo Hart
(UJ Law Clinic, Faculty of Law) and René Benecke (Department of Strategic Communication, Faculty of Humanities). Our common interest in work-integrated education (WIE) brought us together at the end of 2020 to plan our learning-in-action project for 2021 involving our three faculties, and in particular our three departments and our students. Covid-19 taught us to think out of the box and our own research highlighted the need to explore transdisciplinary working during disruptive times.
The purpose of our WIE project was to create a virtual platform developed by students for telling the stories of students and members of the community. It aimed to assist students and lecturers to cope with online and remote learning; ensure that learning outcomes associated
ith various modules in the Diploma in Public Relations, Diploma in usiness Information Systems and Bachelor of Law were achieved;
enable students to apply their storytelling knowledge in their respective contexts; and form partnerships for future collaboration.
The storytelling project was planned for the 2021 academic year with phase one (beginning March) preparing senior Public Relations (PR), Applied Information Systems (AIS) and Applied Legal Studies (ALS) students for their respective activities. PR students were prepared
for the project as it is a credit-bearing assessment activity for them. Students often find it difficult to learn reflectively from their own experiences or reflect the value of their own experiences to their career success (Mules, 2018). Storytelling benefits adult learners and students as it presents them with the opportunity to ‘say who they are and what they think’ (Caminotti & Gray, 2012). Storytelling does not only immerse the student in the moment and context but also provides the opportunity to develop language skills, demonstrate difficult social problems, and provide mutually beneficial meaning-making opportunities.
A group of AIS students prepared the various digital platforms for the PR students to publish their stories on. AIS students are expected to develop digital platforms as a credit-bearing learning outcome in their final year. The ALS students provided legal guidance to PR and AIS students on various legal questions raised by a project of this nature. PR students (around 230) were divided into groups, representing various geographical areas that arose as a consequence of the online teaching model followed during the first semester of 2021. Students were presented with specific topics (aligned with Brand South Africa’s theme of ‘Play your part to bring about change’), and were required to produce short videos and short, reflective stories of their own experiences.
This phase took place during the first term (February to March 2021) with the first stories already uploaded on the developed sites by the