Five academic development programs in the eastern cape province: Reactions of an American academic in South Africa

In February 1996, I came to Border Technikon on a one-year appointment as a visiting professor under the Educators for Africa Program of the International Foundation for Education and Self-Help. My major responsibility in South Africa has been to establish a center for Academic Development (AD) at Border Technikon. My background in the United States includes first evaluating and later directing a program for Instructional Development at Utah State University and for five years directing a four-state consortium promoting instructional development in the western United States. From April 30 to June 8, 1996, I visited four nearby AD programs in the Eastern Cape: University of Port Elizabeth and P.E. Technikon (April 30), Rhodes University (May 8), and the University of Ft. Hare (June 5). In each case I was received hospitably and shown the workings of an ongoing program of academic development. Spinoffs from the visits have been surprisingly fruitful: attendance at a three-day workshop on Supplemental Instruction, participation in two joint presentations on distance education on two campuses, and involvement as a campus representative in a South African Association for Academic Development (SAAAD) workshop. But more importantly, these visits have given me a set of professional contacts that have been invaluable in setting up the AD program at Border. Beyond that, they have changed my thinking. I have seen how the AD enterprise, particularly with the addition of a supplemental instruction program, can combine the energies of both faculty and students to overcome learning problems. During 1996, he served as the Director of the Academic Development Centre at Border Technikon, East London, South Africa, under the Educators for Africa Program of the International Foundation of Education and Self-Help.