Higher education operates on a highly turbulent landscape, often characterised by events that can potentially cause unprecedented and extraordinary disruption to learning and teaching activities. Breaking out for the first time in December 2019 in Wuhan City, China, and soon gaining pandemic status in March 2020 as Covid-19 pandemic, the deadly virus generated a major disruption of volcanic proportion on the higher education landscape, defining a new normal in higher education worldwide. Traditional forms of higher education provision, particularly the campus based contact mode, have been rendered impossible by the pandemic with their return not immediately discernible on the higher education horizon.
Thus, the need to rethink higher education can never be overemphasized. Through its 1st Annual Conference on Innovating Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, the University of Namibia seeks to provide space for re-thinking and innovating higher education learning and teaching post Covid-19 pandemic.
Advancing the discourse and uptake of innovative best practices in higher education, the Conference will include, among others: sharing best practices on cutting edge innovative learning and teaching approaches, research papers, policy briefs, case studies and a variety of formats of interactive sessions – including ministers of higher education panel discussion, vice-chancellors ’round-table discussion, as well as pre/post conference workshops.
The broad objective of the Conference is to provide a platform for higher education educators, policy makers, and higher education leaders to rethink and innovate higher education provision post the COVID-19 pandemic.
Research papers to be submitted should address the following key sub-themes:
a) Innovative learning and teaching in higher education
b) Digital higher education landscape, including disruptive technology for the 4th & 5th Industrial Revolutions
c) Authentic Assessment
d) Curriculum transformation in the digital era
e) Quality assurance of technology enabled learning and teaching
f) The right to education in the digital era
g) Building a global higher education eco-system
h) New financing models in higher education
i) Developing a research eco-system: the role of a modern university
j) National strategies for digital education
k) The role of Private and Public (education) institutions in the digital era.