In today’s digital age, academic support must adapt to meet the needs of tech-savvy students. This is particularly true for those enrolled in SAICA-accredited programmes, which demand rigorous study and discipline. To address these needs, the Institute of Teaching and Learning offers workshops aimed at equipping chartered accountancy departments with the skills to use Microsoft Bookings and Microsoft Viva Engage effectively. These tools not only streamline administrative processes but also enhance student engagement and support, making them indispensable in modern education.
Leveraging Microsoft Bookings for Efficient Academic Support
Microsoft Bookings is a versatile tool that simplifies the scheduling and management of appointments, providing several benefits for students and educators in SAICA-accredited programmes:
- Ease of Scheduling: Students can easily book appointments with lecturers or tutors online. This automated system reduces the time and effort required to arrange meetings, making it more convenient for both students and educators.
- Automated Calendar Integration: Once an appointment is booked, it is automatically added to the calendars of both the student and the lecturer. This feature eliminates the need for manual entries and minimizes the risk of scheduling conflicts.
- Reduced Administrative Burden: By automating the appointment scheduling process, Microsoft Bookings significantly reduces the administrative workload on lecturers. This allows them to focus more on providing quality academic support and less on managing schedules.
- Improved Accessibility: Students have 24/7 access to the booking system, enabling them to schedule appointments at their convenience. This flexibility is particularly beneficial for students with busy or irregular schedules.
- Ensures reliable availability of lecturers: Students, at times, have found and concluded that lecturers are not reliable and have stopped approaching them for consultation. Microsoft Bookings ensures that lecturers are reliably available to students as the consultation booking becomes a commitment for both the student and the lecturer. This removes the frustration on the student’s side.
"A Strong Academic Support programme is the only way to ensure Academic Success. It is no longer enough to argue that 'Our programme is SAICA-accredited'. Students demand and are in need of a Strong Academic Support programme as a feature of your academic programme." - Sitembele James
Enhancing Engagement with Microsoft Viva Engage (Yammer)
Microsoft Viva Engage is designed to foster communication and collaboration in an academic setting. It offers a range of features that encourage engagement and interaction among students and educators:
- Creation of Communities: Viva Engage allows the creation of specific communities for different courses or interest groups, fostering a sense of belonging and facilitating focused discussions. We call these “communities of learning”.
- Making Announcements: Educators can make important announcements quickly and easily, ensuring that all students receive timely updates and information.
- Facilitating Discussions: The platform supports interactive discussions, allowing students to engage with course material and with each other in a meaningful way. This interactive environment enhances understanding and retention of complex concepts. The lecturer or academic assistant, can play a more ‘guiding’ role, being more a ‘facilitator of learning’ in a non-invasive manner.
- Praising Top Performing Students: Educators can publicly acknowledge and praise top-performing students, fostering a positive and motivating learning environment. Students can also ‘praise’ the lecturers or facilitators to ‘acknowledge’ their ‘good approach’ or ‘excellent assistance’ – this naturally increases the students’ interest in consulting and interacting more with their lecturer or facilitator.
- Polling: Educators can create polls to gather feedback or gauge understanding of particular topics. This feature encourages active participation and provides valuable insights into student comprehension.
- Social Media Feel: With its familiar social media-like interface, Microsoft Viva Engage makes it easy for students to navigate and use. This familiarity helps to increase student engagement and participation. Formal Learning Management Systems (LMS’s) are often found to be boring and ‘too formal’ for student engagement. Viva Engagement is more relatable to students, hence its popularity.
Personal Commitment to Student Support
The Institute of Teaching and Learning’s founding director, Mr. Sitembele James, attributes his success in a challenging accounting programme at Nelson Mandela University to the strong academic support he received during his student days. This personal experience drives his commitment to providing similar support to current students. His experience underscores the transformative impact that effective academic support can have on a student’s educational journey. The argument is that Academic Success can only be achieved through a strong academic support programme.
The ITL approach on academic support
The Institute of Teaching and Learning believes in working with Universities, Faculties and Academic Departments to push the idea of a strong academic support programme as a ‘must’ feature in their academic programmes. We believe that it is better to equip lecturers to foster the culture of a strong academic support programme within the learning environment, as a strategy of tackling the high failure rate and lack of student engagement. ITL has run successful workshops & trainings for:
- SAICA-accredited Departments of Accounting (2 Universities)
- Centre for Learning & Teaching Development (1 University)
- Our desire is to assist Universities to institutionalize the usage of e-Tools as a strategy to tackle academic support, which will enable student success!
Conclusion
The use of Microsoft Bookings and Microsoft Viva Engage is crucial for providing comprehensive academic support to digital age students enrolled in SAICA-accredited programmes. The Institute of Teaching and Learning’s workshops are an invaluable resource for chartered accountancy departments looking to enhance their support systems and help their students achieve success. For more information or to schedule a presentation on our workshop offering, please contact us here.
