By Carmen Visser

 

On 20 July 2023, Dr Jessica Cockburn gave her 2021 Special Vice-Chancellor's Distinguished Teaching Award Lecture titled: "Becoming a teacher in turbulent times: cultivating connection and care in context". The event was well-attended by Dr Cockburn's friends, family, fellow lecturers and students.

This recently-introduced special award focuses specifically on academic staff who, in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, responded by creating innovative online and remote teaching courses which succeeded in catering for their students' learning needs.

Dr Cockburn from the Department of Environmental Science was introduced by Rhodes University's Vice-Chancellor, Professor Sizwe Mabizela, as the winner of the 2021 award. The Senior Lecturer has a long and loyal history with the Department of Environmental Science, being a graduate assistant in 2015, a PhD student from 2015-2017, a guest lecturer in 2016, a lecturer from 2020 and now, a senior lecturer. Professor Mabizela explained how Dr Jessica Cockburn is seen as a "mother away from home" by many of her students. She is an irreplaceable part of the department and has helped six Honours students, two Masters students and two PhD students navigate their postgraduate studies.

Starting her lecture, Dr Cockburn shared a sentiment that the Environmental Science Department valued during the COVID-19 pandemic: "Getting your content online is not your priority - maintaining a connection with your students is". She used this as her 'golden rule' during remote teaching to stay connected with her students and help them continue their studies. 

During the remote teaching period, Dr Cockburn followed a teaching philosophy inspired partly by Associate Professor Karen Ellery - the 'Three Cs' – which focuses on connection, context and care. Specifically, Dr Cockburn explained connection to consist of relationality in the form of building and maintaining connections with students and designing a coherent and connective curriculum. She emphasised that the need for compassion and empathy was more significant than ever during the isolating pandemic. Dr Cockburn described the context of her teaching philosophy to include "rapid global environmental change: the climate crisis" and "COVID-19: a world in crisis and a digital divide". Dr Cockburn also explained how South African Higher Education and its focus on diversity, social justice and decoloniality shape her teaching context. 

She described the pandemic as "a difficult time and maybe one we don't want to revisit." Lecturers had to adjust their teaching practices and rely heavily on the technology available to them when the lockdown was announced in South Africa. 

Dr Cockburn approached remote teaching with four main steps. Firstly, she and her colleagues carefully analysed her students' needs to determine how best to help them. Secondly, she focused on maintaining connection and showing empathy towards her students, supporting them individually and in group settings. Thirdly, she moved all her teaching content online using RUConnected. This step also included learning to narrate slides and relying more on multimodal teaching resources, such as videos, websites and interactive exercises. Finally, Dr Cockburn researched and identified online platforms and tools to help her teach. 

Through an interactive exercise, Dr Cockburn illustrated her remote teaching approach by requesting attendees visit a website she had discovered which allows users to input a code (provided by a teacher) and answer specific questions. Dr Cockburn then accessed the website to show the audience the results.

It is important to note that Dr Cockburn's success as a teacher, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, was determined by her willingness to admit mistakes and her continuous commitment to improve. She displayed positive comments from students during course evaluations and shared the criticism and constructive feedback she received over the years.

In the next part of her lecture, Dr Cockburn explained how her post-pandemic experiences of teaching, now as a new mother of her one-year-old son Jonah, included "teaching, learning and living in the moment". Emerging from the pandemic, and then heading into the new challenge of being a working academic mother has not been easy, yet Dr Cockburn is adapting as she learnt to do during the pandemic.

She said, "Environmental scientists take great inspiration from nature", highlighting the aloes blooming in Makhanda this year. "They are connective plants; growing flowers for their bird pollinators, typically found in degraded areas." She described them as seasonal, symbiotic and self-caring – three words she will be adopting as her own teaching philosophy going forward.