UCT’s new learning platform in pilot phase

Dear colleagues and students

The University of Cape Town’s (UCT) new digital learning platform, Amathuba, is currently in a pilot phase of implementation.

Since the announcement of the new learning platform by Vice-Chancellor Professor Mamokgethi Phakeng in December 2021, the project team has been hard at work setting up the platform.

The work done included designing course site templates, working closely with all the faculties to identify pilot courses, migrating existing pilot courses from Vula to Amathuba and developing and training the pilot community (course convenors, teaching staff and administrators).

The Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching (CILT) is excited to report that there are approximately 50 pilot courses from across faculties that will be ready to be offered using Amathuba in July 2022.

• Read the VC Desk: Amathuba, our new digital learning platform.

CILT recently completed three weeks of six-hour intensive training sessions with pilot course convenors, teaching teams and administrators. During the next couple of weeks, the CILT team will support the pilot community in reviewing and revising their course content in preparation for teaching in the second semester.

Training for tutors and students enrolled in these courses will be offered via webinars, during the weeks of 18 and 25 July. There is also an orientation module available for student self-teaching on the Amathuba learning platform.

Feedback will be solicited from the pilot course convenors, their teaching teams and the students enrolled in these pilot courses at different intervals of the second semester. This will be invaluable in helping the CILT project team refine their processes to ensure a smooth migration of all the remaining courses from Vula to Amathuba.

Furthermore, the migration workstream team will contact course convenors whose courses are going to be migrated in the second semester for teaching in 2023, to start the process of migrating these courses from Vula to Amathuba.

All first-year courses, and other courses agreed with faculties to be migrated in 2022, will be ready to be taught using the new digital learning platform by the first semester in 2023. First-year student training on Amathuba will be included in the orientation process from the first semester in 2023.

• Read more on the high-level course migration timelines of the project, frequently asked questions and further updates on Amathuba.

Any other questions can be directed to help@vula.uct.ac.za.

Communication and Marketing Department

Read previous communications:

• From the UCT Executive
• Campus Announcements