Online Course for Doctoral Supervisors at African Universities

There is a need for more African scholars and scientists to contribute to innovation and development on our continent and to enhance Africa’s participation in the knowledge economy. Due to the rapid increase in doctoral enrolments at African universities in recent years, many more well-prepared supervisors are needed at African universities. This course offered a flexible study opportunity to academic staff members, particularly novice doctoral supervisors, who were interested in advancing their knowledge, skills and networks in doctoral supervision.

DigiMethods Winter School

The DigiMethods Winter School was a hands-on event. Media researchers and postgraduate students worked in small groups to explore various research questions about digital media. While doing this research, delegates also learned digital methods to explore their research questions. These included innovative methods to study online news websites, social media, and mobile apps. International and local experts in computational methodologies helped each group produce actual research findings in three days. 

SICSS-JIAS/IPATC Summer School

The SICSS-JIAS/IPATC instructional programme involved lectures, group problem sets and participant-led research projects. Topics covered include text as data, website scraping, digital field experiments, machine learning and ethics. There also were outside speakers who conduct computational social science research in a variety of settings and contexts. Speakers touched on topics such as artificial intelligence in Africa, equity, ethics, decolonisation and algorithmic justice. There were ample opportunities for participants to discuss their ideas and research with the organisers, other participants and visiting speakers. Because we are committed to open and reproducible research, all materials created by faculty and students for the Summer Institute have been released open source. 

CODATA-RDA Research Data Summer School

While the international, collective ability to create, share, and analyse vast quantities of data is profound, there remains a shortage of individuals skilled in Research Data Science worldwide, which limits this transformative effect. With the appropriate data training however, the ‘Data Revolution’ offers great opportunities for students and professionals with modern data skills, such as when entering a job market where these skills are in demand or conducting research. The CODATA-RDA School for Research Data Science brings these concepts and tools to communities that may not have been introduced to the wide range of open resources currently available.

Science Communication

The workshop is designed to be an interactive session to help researchers to refine and improve how they communicate to non-academic audiences. The Writing Masterclass will empower scientists to be able to pitch their articles and establish the key message when writing for the general public and policy makers. 

Journeys in Research Writing

An online course for postgraduate students designed as a generic resource to support students’ research writing. 

Workshops

CPUT Supervision Workshop

This CPUT-focused workshop will combine presentation and interactive sessions to cover various topics involved in postgraduate supervision. 

Open Educational Resources OER: Creating open access content Open 

This workshop focused on the explanation of open licensing and OER, how to find OER, how to evaluate OER, how to adapt OER for incorporation into own materials 

Software

SPSS (Beginner)

This two-day course exposes participants to the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences software.

Software

Atlas.ti

An introductory course on how to use the Atlas.ti software to analyses qualitative data