Good afternoon and welcome to the next session on
UNESCO's Chair presentations.
We've got four speakers here with us this afternoon.
So without more ado, I'd like to present
our first speaker and and and get started.
The first speaker is Kitty Lesicka from the University
city of South Africa.
UniSA, who holds the unicycle chair.
A.D.A.
Open Distance Learning is a professor of philosophy of education
and editor in Chief of Africa Educational Review,
a scholarly journal that is jointly published by UniSA
Press, Ann Taylor and Frances in in the UK.
So we could see if you were there, I'd ask you to.
I can see. Okay, here.
I just yeah, I just unmuted.
Fantastic.
Okay, if you'd like to
share any presentation you have, you can, you can start.
To see my presentation.
We can indeed. Yes. Yes.
Thank you. Thank you very much.
Um, let me just get to the top
of the slide.
Right. Um,
I am.
As you mentioned, I'm holder of the chair,
scaling up and distance, learning at the knees of South Africa.
And I just need to preface my my presentation
is just a brief background that this is unisa.
It's this massive monster.
It's. It's UniSA.
We are one of the the mega African university.
We are it distance learning university with just
almost close to half a million students.
So we are quite huge and it's we,
we operate strictly online
and we don't get to meeting the students and therefore
the whole idea of technology becomes very critical
because we we leverage our teaching,
our research community engagement through the use of technology.
Now, previous speakers
to the
south, we are also
a country that has been classified by the World Bank
and other international agencies,
is the most unequal society.
And the image that I have here is the image of a report
that was produced by South Africa's think tank
and Data Management Board called Statistics South Africa,
which painted a very horrible picture of the
a very clear disparities between the rich and poor.
Almost 75% of the populations of Africa are poor.
They are living below the poverty line.
And that is the kind of I tell
that UNICEF services, we are an access university.
Our mandate is to provide high vision opportunities
for such sections of society that are that find themselves
in low socioeconomic status, family households.
And so my intention here is to share with you look at again from
my slides are not moving
up there you are right so is to share with you first of all
in our run this very quickly I know I don't have enough time.
I created the discussion
in 2018 through developing a proposal
that I submitted, but I set out very clear objectives.
So what are we
in objective was that we are going to operate outside UniSA
Our role would be to produce
openness, leading research that is responsive
to the Unisa's vision in South Africa's vision.
But I also
my apologies, yes,
but I also created a vision where
I wanted to position the chair, as
I said, a hub within the southern
region where we would coordinate all the research.
And I needed to turn it into
something like a space where
we could create a supportive and enabling environment for people
to come congregate, share their ideas,
but also contribute towards
development through open distance learning. Now
this is what I do.
The screen that you see here is a screen that epitomizes
the work that we do at UniSA, the driver
of open distance e-learning research
and driven through the chair is through a very structured
and progressive and Research City seminar.
And in this seminar what I do,
I invite experts from all over the world.
These are members of my network.
These are part of the group of people
that are involved in openness learning, which is a very strong
collaborative partnership, in line with the unifying
tradition at the school to forge
North-South South-South Collaborative partnership.
So I've been very privileged
to bring experts from Australia, from Canada,
from India, from the Netherlands, from Romania and the U.S.
on the African continent.
I do bring people from Botswana, Mauritius, Swaziland,
Malawi, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Tanzania.
So we have created a very rich environment where,
given the inequalities,
we are trying to create in collaborative partnerships
where people can come in and share research with the hope
that it will benefit the needy and talented
young South Africans or even mature
people who have missed out on the opportunities.
And the second portion of that is to create conferences.
To date, I started the conference in 2019.
I had a very successful virtual conference in 2021, another in 22.
Let's run through the themes and the
the first press conference that was done in 2019
was simply for the purpose of stimulating research.
The second question was on mediating openness, learning
in the advent of crises.
And I have to mention, just last month we published a book
which is a collection of those papers that represented confidence.
We are also creating a platform for these sessions to come in
and read papers and we pull these papers through
and we publish them
through our university press, which is the initial press
we just had in 2022, all things recession UDL.
We are at the moment processing just over 20 manuscripts of papers
that were published.
Again, this will be turned into a book.
And so we just had our conference in August.
This one was was content post-COVID.
So we held a conference at one of the five star hotels,
enjoyed it and we received
over 80 extended abstracts and we just issued a call.
So what you are doing, we are creating a platform in a place
form in this trying difficult times in the African continent
where we create a space for audiences to rise.
And we have had the honor of
of of hitting Professor 28 as the Speaker.
And in the previous conferences I had Professor Sanjaya Smith,
who is the director of of Higher Education,
the Commonwealth, and Professor Maha Bali from the African University
in Cairo, Professor and Aras Biscuit from Romania.
And the highest point was bringing in the very CEO
of the Commonwealth of Laning, Professor Usha Kano,
and also from holding back in the lady dev master.
So we have been very privileged right now.
This year we had the Governor of higher Education in Mauritius,
Professor Moore.
Here we had Professor Simmons from Canada and Professor as a lens
who is the former vice Chancellor of the American Interest in Kenya.
So we have been we are able to pull all these high
profile people to come in and
I invite them in Indonesia to share the research.
It's about coordination, it's about partnership,
but it's about the objectives that are set out to achieve.
So this is this is my Vice-Chancellor
and this was in this year's conference.
We brought these people the very high profile and speakers
to come in and share and what that has done.
It has created a lot of
sort of spinoff networks at the moment
and the NYSC chair enjoys very valuable collaborations
with the national opportunities of Tanzania.
This is the picture of me where I was a guest speaker in January,
invited by by Professor Christine Louis,
who's the director of the Regional Training and Institute.
This is leading,
but I also have connections with the University of Lagos.
So the Chair is a very elaborately network center
and I work with the
the the Institute for of in Education in Shenzen, South China.
I've just come back from Beijing in August,
where I was invited by the director of Information Technology, UNESCO's
Director for Information Development as a professor to
invited me to Beijing to give a keynote address
on the Global Smart Education Conference.
So I believe we are we are managing even within
an environment where South Africa is struggling
economically, but we are managing to forge
the collaborative partnerships with fellow ADL to promote
the North-South South-South Economic Partnership
that are an integral part of the trade in this up unit.
School chair And quickly,
these are these are the products of the new school chair.
These are the books that have come out of the chair
in the first term, and I'm over 60 now.
I'm 66.
I'm not allowed to publish solo.
I'm a mentor.
So what I do, I work with young animation scholars.
I have a team of four post-doctoral fellows and I publish with them.
So these are the results of the work that I do.
I think I'm very blessed to see I'm creating a lot of capacity.
There are lots and lots of young
people who are coming in and who leave. Within two years.
They are able to rise up the food chain
to become an associate professor.
So it's a it's a good thing that I'm being
and these are the books, so I'll stop here.
Basically, I think I've shared enough and I'll be more than glad to
engage in questions.
Anybody else who needs my contact.
The center there at DIT in in Spain, in Madrid has my contact details.
It can be shared and I'm open for further contacts and networks.
And if we want to collaborate with each other,
we are more than willing to be part of that. Thank you very much.
I appreciate the opportunity I was given. I'm very blessed. Thank
you very much.
Gorecki And
the analysts are grateful for a concise presentation,
and I'm going to make the most of that
to ask you a brief question, if that's all right.
Yeah.
You mentioned you mentioned that, you know, you're working and living
in a context where a lot of students are
are really too poor to be able to have access
to a traditional university and therefore, by extension of
a lot of them, wouldn't have access to the technology they need to follow
a their courses.
So my question is, what kind of initiatives
are there at community level or maybe at the towns or other level
sort of study centers where these students
can actually go in and make use of technology. As seen
UniSA is different from the many
we call them Ivy League universities, the initiative effort advance.
And I know Professor Linda Cox is here.
I'll mention the use of Cape Town, which is actually the leading
university on the African continent in terms of international ratings.
And this is an access university.
Our mandate is to provide access to higher education opportunities
to mature workers, people who will have missed the opportunity
to obtain qualifications in accounting institutions.
So we see these mature working people who juggle
work, family, charity and initial has a very elaborate structure.
We have campuses across the nine provinces of Africa,
and all these campuses provide access to student visa has also entered
into business partnerships with a lot of NEPAD providers.
So we ensure that if people have access,
those students that are registered drivers are also eligible for data.
And if you are registered in these an exam,
these are a package of data that you need to provide.
We also have it is sort of like buzzing Addis Ababa.
So we work with network companies to ensure
that they get sort of subsidized business opportunity.
But the idea is for them to open doors
for our mostly economically underprivileged students.
So we are trying to reach out and to provide access
to a whole range of networks that are business that link UniSA
with them, the Internet providers and the cellular companies.
So these are rather broad
business collaboration that my university enters into
with a view to creating spaces for disadvantaged students
not to be able to access them.
You just had an a conversation a short while ago on open
educational resources.
We are very strong in ensuring that the publications that we have,
our research is placed on the university repository
where students can access is free.
I hope I have answered that
actually.
That's fantastic. Thank you very much indeed.