Heltasa’s Teaching Advancement at University (TAU) Fellowship Programme began with a bang on the 12 – 16 July, with Unit One of a year-long series at Kievitskroon just outside Pretoria. The programme was attended by 52 academics from 20 South African public higher education institutions, and supported by 11 group facilitators (or ‘enquiry group advisors’) from eight institutions across the country. Participants include deputy deans, professors, and winners of previous national teaching excellence awards. Participants come from a wide range of disciplines and are mostly mid-career academics, though some are senior. All are committed to enhancing teaching and learning, and to making a difference in their various environments. Participants felt the session was ‘very packed’, but many found the opportunity to engage in dialogue with colleagues from other institutions a breath of fresh air, and that it helped reduce their own isolation. There will be two more contact units and two ‘correspondence units’. By the end of the programme everyone will have completed a research and/or development project and will have contributed to a set of findings by their enquiry group. They will then have earned the title, “TAU Fellows”.
The TAU group, seen from above.
TAU enquiry group, “the Lancers”. They are working on projects on the topic of academic literacy.
TAU enquiry group, “TAU bhubesi”. Their projects all focus on transformation in higher education.
