Stellenbosch University Launches Online Platform For High School Learners

Stellenbosch University Launches Online Platform For High School Learners

Stellenbosch University has launched an online platform which has been developed to help high school learners with their academics and university preparation.

The Stellenbosch University (SU) Advantage is an online platform which provides learners in grades 10 to 12 with academic support and tutoring across the eleven subjects which are usually required for admission to a university.

The Stellenbosch University Centre for Pedagogy in the Faculty of Education (SUNCEP) director Dr Benedict Khoboli says the SU Advantage platform is in line with the South African educational system.

He says that SU Advantage will cover the same topics learners have been taught at school by combining effective learning content with live interactive educational support.

“Our platform is built following a four-step approach to learning to provide effective results to users,” Dr Khoboli said.

Learners will receive short-form video lessons which will present important topics in each subject and once they have engaged with the content they will be given topic-based assessments and quizzes to measure their initial understanding of the content.

They will then make use of consolidated workbooks and memo-based reconciliation to evaluate their understanding of key concepts and improve their fundamental comprehension of certain topics.

SU Advantage will also have interactive live lessons in all subjects where subject experts will reinforce and consolidate the concepts learners were exposed to in the short-form video lessons and other learning materials.

The online platform will come at a cost and Khoboli explained to Radio 702  that there will be two streams for SU Advantage.

“Currently, there are two streams, the funded streams and the private stream. The funded stream is where any funder can fund pupils to go online,” he said.

The university has encouraged any funders to help fund learners so that they can gain access to this academic support.

Khoboli says they have developed the platform in the cheapest possible way so that parents can also afford to pay for the children to make use of the programme.