The continuing crisis caused by the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak has raised significant challenges for the higher education community globally. In South Africa, the government-forced lockdown measures and social distancing containment policy changed working arrangements across sectors and organisations. As a result, academics were forced to work from home (WFH), a task for which they were hardly prepared. Several researchers have engaged the WFH situation of academics to understand the relationship between WFH and productivity. As far as we know, very few studies have tried to describe academics’ WFH experiences in relation to the challenges, including determining possible ways of improving their satisfaction with working from home. We examine in this article the experiences of academics working from home across selected universities in South Africa. Using a qualitative approach and applying Atlas.ti for data analysis, our findings show that working from home in academia is a daunting task requiring extensive organisational, personal, and social adjustments. The population comprised all academics irrespective of any demographic or personality characteristic within the management faculty of the participating universities. Five themes—inability to adapt, lack of a home office, loneliness and isolation, inability to balance family and work, and improving satisfaction with work from home—were identified as significant variables from the participants’ responses. Our analysis suggests that organisations need to customise approaches to engage with the experiences of academics who work from home during COVID-19 and to develop fit-for-purpose support for these academics. The study contributes to the growing research exploring the relationship between COVID-19 lockdown and work in higher education.

BackgroundDevelopments in the teaching of children with disabilities support pedagogy that emphasises learners’ strengths as opposed to their assumed deficiencies. Educators and mediators who advocate this view continually strive for tools and methodologies that enhance learner participation in academic environments. Computer technology is one of the tools recognised for its potential to enrich learning experiences of learners with an intellectual impairment.ObjectivesWe sought to assess the influence of text-to-speech stories on the reading ability of intellectually challenged learners.MethodA qualitative action research study that involves learners at a special school in Cape Town, South Africa. Pre- and post-test data of the reading performance of learners are analysed with a focus on how they demonstrate change.ResultsAlthough no claims can be made about the explicit influence on reading performance, computer-assisted learning has the potential in isolating reading processes that classroom-based interventions can address. In addition, computers enhance motivation and enthusiasm to learn.ConclusionA need for education based on inclusion and positive differentiation remains the key driver in any educational interventions.

The varying literacy standards that undergraduate students represent are a reflection of their interim grasp of academic literacy (Paxton 2007). The aim of this study is to analyse a small group of undergraduate first-year students’ depiction of their interim grasp of academic writing and to reflect on how lecturers use formative feedback to respond to specific issues regarding students’ academic transitions within their discipline. Using an emancipatory methodology, this study was designed as a participatory action research. Qualitative data from focus group interviews with lecturers and photovoice presentations by first-year dental technology students were used to explore how students demonstrated their interim grasp of academic essay writing in a Health Science department at a university of technology. However, this article, which is part of a broader study, analyses a small class of first-year students’ depiction of their interim grasp of essay writing and reflects on how their lecturers use formative feedback to respond to these students’ academic transitions within their discipline. Using activity theory and morphogenetic realist theory to analyse essay writing activities during an intervention, the study reveals that images are potent artefacts that students and lecturers use to build meaningful dialogue during essay writing in an uneven terrain.

Curriculum design is a complex undertaking that requires both epistemological and ontological work. While there is an increased need for academics to develop and strengthen their capacity to design curricula, particularly in the context of Universities of Technology, which have gone through an intense period of identity finding and re-curriculation, there is little support for academics involved in this kind of work. This paper reflects on four iterations of an academic staff development intervention aimed at supporting academics engaged in curriculum design and renewal, with a particular focus on designing flexible curricula. Using a learning design model along with eleven design considerations developed by Gachago, et al. (2020) for online academic staff development and Maton’s Legitimation Code Theory – in particular the dimension Specialization - we show how curriculum work and learning design is iterative, contextual and messy. Most importantly, it is relational and involves collective sense-making. We recommend that each context needs to be carefully considered when designing courses, both face-to-face and online, and design considerations (such as motivation, facilitation, structuredness, level of collaboration) impact strongly on participants’ engagement and consequently experiences.

Despite the South African government's desire to encourage economic growth via SME growth, attempts to ameliorate the difficulties encountered by SMEs are often hindered by a lack of resources, one of which is business incubation. This paper employs a descriptive literature review to declutter the varying concerns of SME growth and development from the narratives around the role of business incubators (BIs) and the government. This, we believe, would provide clarity on the challenges faced by SMEs development in South Africa by filtering the roles of both BIs and the government. Descriptive literature review as a qualitative technique helps to reveal an interpretable pattern in the current literature and was thus employed in this study. Even while the literature points to the importance of SMEs in economic growth, their volatility makes them an unreliable partner for the South African government currently. This is because the literature suggests that the government is failing them in one way or the other through limited and failed support systems. Because of their excessive reliance on government funding, BIs cannot help SMEs as they should because of the lack of funding. Consequently, one might argue that the & quot; law of unintended consequences," or the unexpected repercussions of government policies and actions/inactions, hinder South Africa's government from achieving its objectives. We flag some implications and future research directions in our closing arguments.