Although the number of academic staff holding a doctorate falls below 50%, academic staff members are usually recruited mainly on the strengths of their discipline expertise and less so on their teaching preparedness and teaching skills. Similarly, the undergraduate content of teaching is largely textbook-based with absence of student-driven activities. A recent evaluation report reveals that the subject content knowledge and pedagogical knowledge of most South African university staff is poor and that this is a major cause of inadequate learner achievement and mismatch with employability needs (Breier and Herman, 2017). Therefore, there is need to integrate multiple tools for innovative interdependent learning techniques in higher education to foster teaching competence/skills, and tackle issues related to SDGs.

Most of teaching methodology applied, especially in undergraduate teaching focuses on lecturing, with very little use of problem-based learning strategies, place-based pedagogy, utilization of ICTs as enabling pedagogical tools, and other innovative teaching/learning tools suitable for curriculum reconstruction to address sustainability challenges in South Africa. Therefore, academic staff involved should be not only qualified in teaching, but also be adequately trained in an ongoing basis  in order to remain agile in an ever-changing Higher Education environment.

The proposed project addresses the following national priorities in South Africa Category 1: Modernization of curricula in multiple academic disciplines through capacity building of university staff in the prioritized subjects, such as sciences, agricultural sciences, environmental sciences, in innovative teaching and learning tools, methodologies and pedagogical approaches, including learning outcomes and ICT-enabled practices.