Data skills are becoming a must-have, but students and staff in South Africa still lack the training to take full advantage of the shift
South Africa¡¯s universities are working to embed data skills in their curricula to make students more attractive to employers, although training for both staff and students remains a to-do task.
That was the main conclusion of a round table titled ¡°How can institutions ensure that learners are equipped with the key data skills that employers in South Africa currently require?¡±. The session was held by 51³Ô¹Ï in partnership with Coursera for Campus.
Frances Quirke, partnerships director at Coursera, highlighted how universities in South Africa are yet to fully train their staff on data skills, a necessary step prior to implementing digital transformation at institutions.
¡°Right now, 1.74 million people in South Africa are learning in our platform. Fascinatingly, 193,000 of them declare themselves as students. The key interests are, not surprisingly, in three areas: data, business, and technology,¡± Quirke said.
The panel agreed that the blended learning approach of the future, in which digital plays a key role, will require universities to step up their efforts to offer up-to-date data skills training.
David Kabwa, president of the Student Representative Council at the University of Pretoria, warned of the fast-changing nature of such skills. ¡°A huge concern we see is the technology skills have a shelf life of two or three years, yet we are creating a huge amount of content in those spaces. It¡¯s terrifying to think that the work you did three years ago is gone,¡± he said.
Kabwa added that if 193,000 students were using Coursera¡¯s platform in South Africa, there was an opportunity for universities to blend that content into the curriculum.
Francis Petersen, vice-chancellor at the University of the Free State, said it was key for universities to bring in experts from outside academia to improve their programmes. ¡°We have established a series of programmes which bring people from outside ¨C [from] the private sector, but from government as well ¨C to tell us what skills students need and question why they are not in the curriculum. Then we took a step forward, asking them to come and work with us and co-create programmes. We are expanding this.¡±
Loretta Feris, former deputy vice-chancellor for transformation at the University of Cape Town, said staff need to sharpen their tracking of data, as well as their engagement. ¡°Even though we provided our students with laptops and data [for the emergency remote learning brought about by the pandemic], many simply were in remote areas where connection is poor, and that¡¯s part of the reality of South Africa,¡± she said. ¡°We asked our academics to track students¡¯ participation, the levels of engagement, etcetera. [These are] elements of data for which we have not trained our academics to engage with.¡±
Shaun Pather, chair of the department of information systems at the University of the Western Cape, said understanding data will become a key skill required by employers. ¡°Data has always been around, but now it¡¯s in electronic form and much more easily available,¡± Pather said. ¡°Average workplaces expect graduates to understand the notion of data, how to access, organise, and use it for any decision-making that is particular to a specific domain.¡±
The panel:
- Loretta Feris, former deputy-vice-chancellor for transformation, University of Cape Town
- David Kabwa, Student Representative Council?president, University of Pretoria
- Alistair Lawrence, special projects editor, 51³Ô¹Ï (chair)
- Shaun Pather, chair of the department of information systems, University of the Western Cape
- Francis Petersen, vice-chancellor, University of the Free State
- Frances Quirke, partnerships director, Coursera
Watch the?round table on demand above or on the?.
?about Coursera for Campus.
