Mission

The NWU’s structure provides for three main pillars: teaching, learning and assessment; community engagement and stakeholder relationships; and research and innovation. Our mission for each pillar is:

Teaching, Learning and Assessment

Community engagement and stakeholder relationships

Research and Innovation

  • Collaborating across our programmes and campuses;
  • alleviate content gaps through systemic assessment;
  • alignment of Contact and Distance-learning;
  • teaching resources and community of collaborative teaching/ learning;
  • integrated teaching/ learning (all subjects in EC & FP);
  • teaching materials development: students develop materials for own teaching;
  • ECDE: Enable critical reflection in class and among colleagues;
  • NGO’s to be involved in teaching; and
  • aligned rules for students (assignments, semester tests, eFundi).
  • Be an informant and place to network about interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research and projects;
  • support and raise awareness about funding opportunities:
    • academic research
    • external funders
    • community (NGO) interventions;
  • become the vehicle to inform our teaching and research activities;
  • establish stakeholder-relationships and a space where community members can turn to assist with national policies;
  • provide clear guidelines on sustainable CE-projects; and
  • enable service-learning and student engagement.
  • disseminating information on all ECDE seminars/conferences;
  • identify areas to focus on for research and topics related to the other two pillars of the NWU;
  • know ECDE lecturers’ areas of expertise to support each other in research (discourse and workshops);
  • conduct research on robotics (ECDE);
  • collaboration and support of lecturers with other stakeholders;
  • create opportunities to share strengths and networking;
  • invite new/emerging lecturers to collaborate and learn from experts; and
  • co-authorship among colleagues.