ABOUT BOOK

The COVID-19 pandemic severely impacted teaching and learning at higher ~education institutions (HEIs), and this book disseminates research findings on ~a series of cross-campus online initiatives of the North-West University (NWU) ~to ensure high-quality self-directed learning, whilst simultaneously attending ~to the need for inclusion and diversity in this challenging context. The golden ~thread running through the 13 chapters is how this HEI responded to the ~pandemic in a creative way through its investment in online virtual student ~excursions, based on problem-based, cooperative learning and gamification ~principles to support self-directed learning. Whereas virtual excursions usually ~refer to learning opportunities where ‘a museum, author, park or monument is ~brought to the student’ (Hehr 2014:1), the virtual excursion in our context is an ~activity system (Engeström 1987) where students’ learning is scaffolded ~across the zone of proximal development (Vygotsky 1978) and where their ~‘social and pedagogical boundaries are stretched or expanded’ (De Beer & ~Henning 2011:204). Students engage as Homo ludens, the playing human ~(Huizinga 1955), in learning activities embedded in an ill-structured problem, ~and through reflective activities, they are encouraged to reflect on their own ~naïve understandings or biases. This ‘tension’, or in Veresov (2007) parlance, ~‘dramatical collisions’, provides a fertile learning space for self-directed ~learning.