Browsing by Author "Verster, Belinda"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    Design principles for interdisciplinary collaborative learning through social, digital innovation
    (Universitat Politecnica de Valencia, Valencia, 2021) Verster, Belinda; van den Berg, Carolien
    As academics, we are acutely aware of our responsibility in the design of our teaching and learning environment to instil principles of ethics, sustainability, agency and social justice. We are at the crossroad between the commodification of knowledge versus learning that steeped in well-being and innovative socio-ecological and or socio-technical transitions. These complexities prompted a Design-Based Research (DBR) project that commenced in 2020 to test and refine design principles that can facilitate an interdisciplinary, collaborative learning environment that exposes students to future challenges foregrounded in social justice perspectives of local voice, collaboration and co-design. A conceptual model informed by four pedagogical propositions of relationality, reflexivity, responsiveness and recognition is stipulated and nine design principles derived from these propositions are proposed.
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    Sympoiesis ‘becoming with and through each other’: Exploring collaborative writing as emergent academics
    (Critical Studies in Teaching & Learning, 2020) Collett, Karen; van den Berg, Carolien; Verster, Belinda
    This paper explores our journey as three female academics as we collaboratively engage in the process of writing for scholarly publication. We read our experience through a Political Ethic of Care, Slow scholarship, and Sympoiesis. Informed by Barad’s (2007) relational ontology of space~time~mattering we explore our process of collaborative writing. We trace our journey as emerging scholars in different environments and through different modalities and material entanglements. The paper contributes to an understanding of how emerging academics find and create opportunities to develop their scholarly practice through collaborative sympoietic relationships. We show how through an engaged and sustained Slow scholarship we were able to claim space and time to enliven our creativity and joy. This empowered us to meaningfully assert ourselves within the context of a neoliberal academic environment and to reimagine how socially just practices of scholarly writing could be realised in the‘belly of the beast’.
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    Theorising with sociomateriality: interdisciplinary collaboration in socio-technical learning environments
    (Educational Research for Social Change, 2022) van den Berg, Carolien; Verster, Belinda
    In this paper, we explore the possibilities offered by sociomateriality for academics to engage with complex learning environments. The focus is on a longitudinal design-based research (DBR) study that includes an interdisciplinary, collaborative student project between Information Systems (IS) and Urban Planning (URP) from two different higher education institutions in Cape Town, South Africa. In the project, student groups collaborate to find potential digital innovations for sustainability challenges in their local communities. The aim is to position the student as an active community member with intimate knowledge of local sustainability challenges, and to develop social digital innovations for the benefit of local communities. We apply sociomateriality as a theoretical lens to rethink socio-technical learning environments and propose four pedagogical propositions of relationality, reflexivity, responsiveness, and recognition to guide the pedagogical decision-making when designing complex learning environments. We conclude the paper by mapping student reflections and experiences to the four pedagogical propositions to illustrate how the theoretical sociomaterial elements translate into the learning environment.
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    Towards a framework for interdisciplinary collaborative online learning spaces
    (Universidad Politecnica de Valencia, 2022) Berg, Carolien van den; Verster, Belinda
    This paper presents the findings from a longitudinal, inter-institutional Design-Based Research (DBR) study that commenced in 2020 with a focus on developing design principles for interdisciplinary collaborative online learning. The draft design principles as presented at HEAd’21 were further refined during the first iteration of the project and an updated framework is presented in this paper. The conceptual framework draws on elements of Future Learning Spaces (FLS) and sociomateriality to better understand and contextualise the design principles as it applies to pedagogy, space-time activities and technology.