Case Studies

These are short case studies built around selected specimens in the UCT pathology teaching collection, intended to support learning around common pathological conditions in Southern Africa.  The student cases form part of the UCT Digital Pathology online collection (www.digitalpathology.uct.ac.za), which catalogues thousands of pathology specimens used for teaching and learning.

This website, shared through Creative Commons, gives electronic access to several thousand pathology specimens in our pathology teaching collection. It is intended for use by undergraduate and postgraduate students in the health sciences. There are currently three main catalogues for (1) the anatomical pathology collection (2) the forensic pathology collection and (3) the obstetrics and gynaecology collection. (A paediatric pathology section is in the pipeline).

This is an historical collection (begun in the 1920’s) so the cataloguing is rather old fashioned. The specimens are catalogued by organ or system e.g. “kidneys” and then by broad pathological category e.g. “neoplasms”. Each specimen has a brief description and commentary along with good quality photographs. The emphasis is on macroscopic pathology; we are aiming to include more radiographic imaging and also microscopy going forward.

The website is a work in progress so much of our material is still in the process of being reviewed and uploaded. For all that use the website, please be respectful of all the specimens and their images. Although anonymous now, they originate from real patients whose diseases were often distressing, painful and fatal.

Funded by: Department of Education, South Africa 

This case study focuses on the multiple factors which feed into under 5 malnutrition (including the social determinants of disease). It is set in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa in 2002. The UNICEF Conceptual Framework is used as a tool for analysis.

The case is structured as a short narrative case study followed by an introduction to the UNICEF Conceptual Framework. In addition, contextual information is supplied and could be supplemented, using links to further sources of information, plus some tables and photographs. Also included are links to journal articles outlining possible responses to this situation.

This case study resource has been developed at the School of Public Health (SOPH), University of the Western Cape (UWC) and used in our teaching. It is based on a research project undertaken over 12 years in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa by Emeritus Prof David Sanders and Prof Thandi Puoane of the SOPH, UWC with Prof Ann Ashworth from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

The case concerns an informal settlement with a high prevalence of diarrheal disease in sub-Saharan Africa, and the factors that feed into this situation. The learning aim is to apply a model for intervention – the Public Health Action Cycle, which is based on UNICEF’s Triple A Cycle for nutrition improvement.

This case study explores progress made, lessons learned and possibilities for the future in harnessing Open Educational Resources (OER) in support of the vision and mission of Africa Nazarene University to open learning opportunities in higher education. We begin by providing a context for the work that has been undertaken to date.

Paul Mumba, Principal of LEAP Science and Maths School in Diepsloot joins the panel to talk about his experience of leading a school in a township context. He also talks about the South African Extraordinary Schools Coalition (the community of practice he belongs to) and what it has meant to him to be part of that collaborative platform.

Find more podcasts on Leadership in Education on the BRIDGE Knowledge Hub or on CliffCentral.com.

A team of key players from BRIDGE’s National ECD Community of Practice (ECD CoP) and the National ECD Alliance (NECDA) met in dialogue to focus on key challenges facing the ECD sector, the specific strengths and challenges of each structure and the potential for collaboration.

Through the dialogue, participants identified and agreed on opportunities for strategic collaboration to further the agenda of civil society organisations working in ECD in South Africa.

BRIDGE’s focus on ICTs as a cross-cutting theme in education has recently taken centre stage in several contexts. An important concern is to make sure that the device is not the goal; technology must support teaching and learning rather than overwhelming it.

We were joined by the first two principals in Gauteng to be part of the controversial school-twinning process.  They discussed how they have worked through the process and dispelled some of the myths.

In this video, Melissa King of BRIDGE, provides an update on the progress of the development of the ECD CoP’s ECD Quality Reflective Toolkit. The purpose reflection tool is to help practitioners (including care-givers, trainers and other stakeholders) think about quality in ECD and reflect on: “What is quality ECD provision in practice?”

The Axis Education Summit is an annual convergence of students, teachers, school leaders and stakeholders in the South African educational sector. The summit was hosted by the Global Teachers Institute in partnership with Teach With Africa, the South African Extraordinary Schools Coalition and BRIDGE. In 2015 the summit theme was “A New Story for Education” and strove to lead the change for a new and positive narrative for education transformation in South Africa and the rest of the world.

This resource focuses on the Leadership in education show on Cliffcentral.com every Monday. This weeks guest was Fiona Wallace of the CoZaCares Foundation, chatting about leadership in a school that’s on a tech journey.

The National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) is the second largest university in Africa with more than 180,000 students. The OER project at NOUN was initially motivated in response to the 2012 UNESCO/Commonwealth of Learning Paris Declaration on OER. Specifically, NOUN referred to the section that encouraged government-funded materials to be released under an open licence and made available and accessible as OER.  

The University of South Africa (UNISA) is a mega open and distance learning (ODL) university with more than 400,000 students in South Africa and around the world. UNISA committed to the implementation of OER within the university by incorporating support for OER into all relevant policies and processes. This is seen as the critical enabling factor. Moreover, as an open university, it was felt OER are well aligned with the institution's academic traditions of sharing knowledge while being beneficial to learners.

Kenya, like many African countries, has faced enormous challenges in the production of and access to quality relevant teaching and learning materials and resources in primary and secondary school classrooms. This has been occasioned by a plethora of factors which include, but are not limited to, lack of finances, tradition, competence, and the experience to develop such resources. Such a situation has persisted despite the existence and availability of many Open Educational Resources (OERs) that have been developed by education stakeholders at enormous cost. Such freely available resources could potentially improve the quality of existing resources or help to develop new courses. Yet, their uptake and reuse in secondary and primary schools in Kenya continues to be very low. This paper reports the findings of a study in which Open Resources for English Language Teaching (ORELT) developed by the Commonwealth of Learning (COL), Canada, were piloted in a sample of fifty (50) Kenyan secondary schools. The study applied the Model 1 – Distance and Dependence (Zhao et al 2002) model to investigate the challenges that instructors face in adopting and using ORELT materials. The study reported that poor infrastructure, negative attitudes, lack of ICT competencies, and other skill gaps among teachers, as well as lack of administrative support, are some of the challenges experienced in the adoption and use of OERs in Kenyan schools. The findings of the present study will provide useful insights to developers of OERs and Kenyan education stakeholders in devising strategies to optimise utilisation of OERs in the Kenyan school system.

Several scholars and organizations suggest that institutional policy is a key enabling factor for academics to contribute their teaching materials as open educational resources (OER). But given the diversity of institutions comprising the higher education sector—and the administrative and financial challenges facing many institutions in the Global South—it is not always clear which type of policy would work best in a given context. Some policies might act simply as a “hygienic” factor (a necessary but not sufficient variable in promoting OER activity) while others might act as a “motivating” factor (incentivizing OER activity either among individual academics or the institution as a whole). In this paper, we argue that the key determination in whether a policy acts as a hygienic or motivating factor depends on the type of institutional culture into which it is embedded. This means that the success of a proposed OER-related policy intervention is mediated by an institution’s existing policy structure, its prevailing social culture and academics’ own agency (the three components of what we’re calling “institutional culture”). Thus, understanding how structure, culture, and agency interact at an institution offers insights into how OER policy development could proceed there, if at all. Based on our research at three South African universities, each with their distinct institutional cultures, we explore which type of interventions might actually work best for motivating OER activity in these differing institutional contexts.

OER Africa coordinated a project for the Network of Open Orgs. The project involved a collaborative effort among several members of the Network to develop a set of seven case study summaries that collectively explored the success of OER and highlighted the implications of these initiatives for Continuous Professional Development for OER practices.

A relatively recent global movement, the development of free-to-use open educational resources (OER) has generated a dynamic field of widespread interest and study regarding methods for creating and sustaining OER. To help foster a thriving OER movement with potential for knowledge-sharing across program, organizational and national boundaries, the Institute for Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME), developed and conducted case study research programs in collaboration with six OER projects from around the world. Embodying a range of challenges and opportunities among a diverse set of OER projects, the case studies intended to track, analyze and share key developments in the creation, use and reuse of OER. The specific cases include: CurriculumNet, Curriki, Free High School Science Texts (FHSST), Training Commons, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP), and Teachers' Domain.