Jennifer Case - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Jennifer Case
Gold has been demonstrated as a possible catalyst for oxidation reactions. Some evidence for a po... more Gold has been demonstrated as a possible catalyst for oxidation reactions. Some evidence for a possible promotion effect of platinum has also been recorded. The influence of platinum as promoter for Au/γ-Al 2 O 3 prepared via anionic ion-exchange for the oxidation of glycerol was investigated in a batch reactor at 60°C. It is inferred that the addition of platinum reduces the catalytic activity and the rate of deactivation, resulting in an overall higher final conversion of glycerol with increasing platinum loading. The addition of platinum to the catalyst favours the formation of the desired product, glyceric acid.
This study investigates the vacation work experiences of a group of final-year civil and chemical... more This study investigates the vacation work experiences of a group of final-year civil and chemical engineering students at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. Situated cognition theory, with its conceptualization of learning as induction into a community of practice through the activity of legitimate peripheral participation, was used to analyze focus group and interview data. Issues of race and gender appeared prominently and spontaneously in students' accounts of their experiences. Access to legitimate peripheral participation was associated with positive identity formation in the role of engineer-to-be, while denial of this access severely affected learning and feelings of selfworth.
Higher Education
This introduction to the 50th anniversary special issue of Higher Education recounts the history ... more This introduction to the 50th anniversary special issue of Higher Education recounts the history of the journal and reflects on the evolution and expansion of the journal and the field. Higher education studies is an object-oriented field that combines academic explanations with practical interventions. The journal takes an agnostic approach to disciplinary frameworks, theories, and methodologies and an eclectic and inclusive approach to topics. It began in 1972 with a preoccupation with the nature and implications of mass higher education systems, including internationally comparative analyses, and with a focus on policy and planning. Most of the earlier themes of research in the field have continued to the present, but as mass higher education systems have spread across the world, so has the journal's author list and editorial group. Higher education studies remain biased to the Anglophone and Euro-American worlds in their topics, theorizations, and author lists. Between 1996 and 2018, the USA and other English-speaking countries accounted for about 70% of authorship in the six journals with the highest impact factor. However, in Higher Education, that proportion was just over 45%, indicating some progress in the journal's efforts to pluralize, partly through the growth of papers from China. The introduction looks forward, anticipating growth in contributions from the global South, and further inquiry into the purposes of higher education and into its relations in social context. Finally, the introduction discusses the 50th anniversary papers that follow, contributed by twelve present and past editors of the journal. Keyword Higher education; Higher education studies; International higher education; Academic publishing; Anglophone bias; Purposes of higher education Higher Education published its first issues in 1972. In 2022, the journal therefore marks its 50th anniversary, which affords an opportunity to reflect upon the past and look to the future. This special issue both celebrates the journal and offers a critical retrospective and forward-looking assessment of the field of higher education studies. Today, the field of higher education is well established globally. But in 1972, it was a nascent multidisciplinary field with a budding interest in a number of countries. The journal (full title: Higher
This study investigated how well chemical engineering graduates perceive they were prepared for w... more This study investigated how well chemical engineering graduates perceive they were prepared for work in industry. To this end, sixteen interviews were carried out with a purposive sample of recent University of Cape Town chemical engineering graduates. Qualitative analysis of the interview data showed that graduates felt that overall, they were well prepared for work in industry. They perceived their strengths to be their technical background, problem solving skills, formal communication skills and life-long learning abilities. The following areas of weakness were also identified: work in multi-disciplinary teams, leadership, practical preparation and management skills. The use of interviews for data collection is a significant departure from the methods used in other studies in this area. The rich and contextual data gathered from the interviews justified this choice and contributed to the identification of issues not previously mentioned in the literature. For example, an unexpect...
How can research on academic literacies throw light on the challenge to widen access to undergrad... more How can research on academic literacies throw light on the challenge to widen access to undergraduate science studies? This article explores what an academic literacies approach might mean in the context of undergraduate physics. The study examines the pedagogical practices and student learning in two undergraduate Physics courses, a mainstream and an extended course, with a particular focus on the disciplinary practice of problem-solving. Concepts from the sociology of knowledge, specifically Legitimation Code Theory, offer a useful analytical framework for characterising the movement between abstract principles and concrete contexts in problem-solving and understanding how meaning is encapsulated in the dense representations of physics. The study shows that with more time and careful pedagogical attention, the extended course was able to make more explicit the literacy practices and epistemological functioning of the discipline. The study found that the extended course adopted a m...
Drawing on the South African case, this book looks at shifts in higher education around the world... more Drawing on the South African case, this book looks at shifts in higher education around the world in the last two decades. In South Africa, calls for transformation have been heard in the university since the last days of apartheid. Similar claims for quality higher education to be made available to all have been made across the African continent. In spite of this, inequalities remain and many would argue that these have been exacerbated during the Covid pandemic. Understanding Higher Education: Alternative Perspectives responds to these calls by arguing for a social account of teaching and learning by contesting dominant understandings of students as ‘decontextualised learners’ premised on the idea that the university is a meritocracy. This book tackles the issue of teaching and learning by looking both within and beyond the classroom. It looks at how higher education policies emerged from the notion of the knowledge economy in the newly democratic South Africa, and how national qu...
2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access Proceedings
Town. Her research on the student experience of learning, focusing mainly on science and engineer... more Town. Her research on the student experience of learning, focusing mainly on science and engineering education, has been published across a range of journal articles in higher education and her recent book, Researching student learning in higher education: A social realist approach published in 2013 by Routledge. She holds an academic development post in the Department of Chemical Engineering at UCT, and teaches in the undergraduate programme there. She is a coordinating editor for the international journal Higher Education and a co-editor for the Routledge/SRHE series Research into Higher Education.
African Journal of Research in Mathematics, Science and Technology Education, 2003
This study examines the factors that influenced first-year students in the Department of Mechanic... more This study examines the factors that influenced first-year students in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Cape Town to follow a career in mechanical engineering. The data were collected over two years from first year students during the first week of each academic year as part of a questionnaire that asked various questions relating to the students' choice of what and where to study. A qualitative analysis of the responses resulted in ten categories of influence being developed: "exposure to engineering career", "school subjects", "socialisers", "if not, then…", "specific career plan", "career rewards", "flexibility and challenge", "physical activities", "intellectual activities" and "social identity". These were subsequently grouped into four macro-categories: "societal influences", "personal career vision", "product related activities" and "social/civic responsibility". A quantitative analysis showed significant differences between the responses on the basis of race and gender. The results of this study show that different factors influence particular groups of learners during their career choice process. Focused interventions around these factors can serve to encourage more learners to follow a career in mechanical engineering.
Journal- South African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy
Gold has been demonstrated as a possible catalyst for oxidation reactions. Some evidence for a po... more Gold has been demonstrated as a possible catalyst for oxidation reactions. Some evidence for a possible promotion effect of platinum has also been recorded. The influence of platinum as promoter for Au/γ-Al2O3 prepared via anionic ion-exchange for the oxidation of glycerol was investigated in a batch reactor at 60°C. It is inferred that the addition of platinum reduces the catalytic activity and the rate of deactivation, resulting in an overall higher final conversion of glycerol with increasing platinum loading. The addition of platinum to the catalyst favours the formation of the desired product, glyceric acid.
Journal- South African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy
A range of supported gold catalysts was prepared by ion exchange, varying many of the preparation... more A range of supported gold catalysts was prepared by ion exchange, varying many of the preparation variables, including concentration in the precursor solution, washing procedure, as well as drying and calcination procedures. These catalysts have been characterized extensively. TEM images show essentially the same crystallite size distributions, between 2–5 nm, for almost all catalysts, the only exception being catalysts not washed in ammonia, which did not show any small crystallites. Additional characterization with SEM yielded an interesting discovery. Catalysts that appear identical on the TEM also contain some large crystallites in the range of 50–500 nm. Differences in dispersion due to the drying procedure not seen on the TEM can now be observed. Oxygen chemisorption is being investigated as an additional method to characterize gold based catalysts to complement the typically used electron microscope techniques.
Teaching in Higher Education, 2010
EJ893334 - Being a Student Again: A Narrative Study of a Teacher.
Creating Conditions for Student Success: Social justice perspectives from a South African university, 2021
Journal of Education, 2015
The relationship between education research and the scholarship of teaching and learning (SOTL) i... more The relationship between education research and the scholarship of teaching and learning (SOTL) is still debated, while a distinction has been made between scholarly teaching and SOTL. This study compares and contrasts two programmes of work that took place in a particular 2nd year engineering course, both led by the author. The first programme was an educational research project investigating student learning in the course. The second programme was a period of teaching, leading to some SOTL output. Analysis of the knowledge drawn on in teaching, confirms that good university teaching is not a direct application of research findings but rather draws on a broad and largely tacit practical base of knowledge. The article also offers a deliberation on whether it is productive to maintain the distinction between education research and SOTL.
2020 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE), 2020
This full paper examines the potential for using LinkedIn profile analysis to understand engineer... more This full paper examines the potential for using LinkedIn profile analysis to understand engineers' everyday work activity. Calls for change in engineering education are often framed around perceptions of the changing nature of engineering work in present times. Existing research on engineering work, which draws on interviews, ethnography, case studies, or surveys, consistently highlights the social and contextual dimensions of practice, but also suggests that engineering work may have more to do with maintaining existing systems than with creative development of new systems. To add to this growing body of research, in this exploratory study we turn to a novel data source: publicly available descriptions of engineering work available on social networks and job posting sites. Such data sources, if found to be useful, could significantly expand the reach of research on engineering work and provide access to much larger data sets than those obtained through currentpredominantly qualitative-methods. This study is a preliminary look at using LinkedIn for these purposes. Specifically, we ask the question, "How does data about engineering work from LinkedIn compare to findings from in-depth interviews?" To answer this question, we use interviews with 15 new engineers at six and 12 months of work, and compare them to participants' LinkedIn profiles. The interviews, collected as part of a separate study, focused on newcomers' workplace responsibilities and challenges. Analysis focused on inductive coding to categorize engineers' work experiences and environments. The findings were then compared to participants' LinkedIn profiles to identify gaps and overlaps.
Jennifer Case is Head and Professor in the Department of Engineering Education at Virginia Tech. ... more Jennifer Case is Head and Professor in the Department of Engineering Education at Virginia Tech. She holds an honorary position at the University of Cape Town. Her research on the student experience of learning, focusing mainly on science and engineering education, has been published across a range of journal articles in higher education and her recent book, Researching student learning in higher education: A social realist approach published in 2013 by Routledge. She holds an academic development post in the Department of Chemical Engineering at UCT, and teaches in the undergraduate programme there. She is a coordinating editor for the international journal Higher Education and a co-editor for the Routledge/SRHE series Research into Higher Education.
In what ways does access to undergraduate education have a transformative impact on people and so... more In what ways does access to undergraduate education have a transformative impact on people and societies? What conditions are required for this impact to occur? What are the pathways from an undergraduate education to the public good, including inclusive economic development? These questions have particular resonance in the South African higher education context, which is attempting to tackle the challenges of widening access and improving completion rates in in a system in which the segregations of the apartheid years are still apparent. Higher education is recognised in core legislation as having a distinctive and crucial role in building post-apartheid society. Undergraduate education is seen as central to addressing skills shortages in South Africa. It is also seen to yield significant social returns, including a consistent positive impact on societal institutions and the development of a range of capabilities that have public, as well as private, benefits. This book offers comp...
Changing Higher Education for a Changing World, 2020
2018 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition Proceedings
I am currently an "Academic Development Lecturer" in the Civil Engineering Department at the Univ... more I am currently an "Academic Development Lecturer" in the Civil Engineering Department at the University of Cape Town. The position involves curriculum development aimed at improving student performance and experience in engineering. This has directed my interest in graduate preparedness and led me to focus on design both at first and final year, and also how reasoning between the concrete and abstract can be implemented in disciplinary subjects.
Gold has been demonstrated as a possible catalyst for oxidation reactions. Some evidence for a po... more Gold has been demonstrated as a possible catalyst for oxidation reactions. Some evidence for a possible promotion effect of platinum has also been recorded. The influence of platinum as promoter for Au/γ-Al 2 O 3 prepared via anionic ion-exchange for the oxidation of glycerol was investigated in a batch reactor at 60°C. It is inferred that the addition of platinum reduces the catalytic activity and the rate of deactivation, resulting in an overall higher final conversion of glycerol with increasing platinum loading. The addition of platinum to the catalyst favours the formation of the desired product, glyceric acid.
This study investigates the vacation work experiences of a group of final-year civil and chemical... more This study investigates the vacation work experiences of a group of final-year civil and chemical engineering students at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. Situated cognition theory, with its conceptualization of learning as induction into a community of practice through the activity of legitimate peripheral participation, was used to analyze focus group and interview data. Issues of race and gender appeared prominently and spontaneously in students' accounts of their experiences. Access to legitimate peripheral participation was associated with positive identity formation in the role of engineer-to-be, while denial of this access severely affected learning and feelings of selfworth.
Higher Education
This introduction to the 50th anniversary special issue of Higher Education recounts the history ... more This introduction to the 50th anniversary special issue of Higher Education recounts the history of the journal and reflects on the evolution and expansion of the journal and the field. Higher education studies is an object-oriented field that combines academic explanations with practical interventions. The journal takes an agnostic approach to disciplinary frameworks, theories, and methodologies and an eclectic and inclusive approach to topics. It began in 1972 with a preoccupation with the nature and implications of mass higher education systems, including internationally comparative analyses, and with a focus on policy and planning. Most of the earlier themes of research in the field have continued to the present, but as mass higher education systems have spread across the world, so has the journal's author list and editorial group. Higher education studies remain biased to the Anglophone and Euro-American worlds in their topics, theorizations, and author lists. Between 1996 and 2018, the USA and other English-speaking countries accounted for about 70% of authorship in the six journals with the highest impact factor. However, in Higher Education, that proportion was just over 45%, indicating some progress in the journal's efforts to pluralize, partly through the growth of papers from China. The introduction looks forward, anticipating growth in contributions from the global South, and further inquiry into the purposes of higher education and into its relations in social context. Finally, the introduction discusses the 50th anniversary papers that follow, contributed by twelve present and past editors of the journal. Keyword Higher education; Higher education studies; International higher education; Academic publishing; Anglophone bias; Purposes of higher education Higher Education published its first issues in 1972. In 2022, the journal therefore marks its 50th anniversary, which affords an opportunity to reflect upon the past and look to the future. This special issue both celebrates the journal and offers a critical retrospective and forward-looking assessment of the field of higher education studies. Today, the field of higher education is well established globally. But in 1972, it was a nascent multidisciplinary field with a budding interest in a number of countries. The journal (full title: Higher
This study investigated how well chemical engineering graduates perceive they were prepared for w... more This study investigated how well chemical engineering graduates perceive they were prepared for work in industry. To this end, sixteen interviews were carried out with a purposive sample of recent University of Cape Town chemical engineering graduates. Qualitative analysis of the interview data showed that graduates felt that overall, they were well prepared for work in industry. They perceived their strengths to be their technical background, problem solving skills, formal communication skills and life-long learning abilities. The following areas of weakness were also identified: work in multi-disciplinary teams, leadership, practical preparation and management skills. The use of interviews for data collection is a significant departure from the methods used in other studies in this area. The rich and contextual data gathered from the interviews justified this choice and contributed to the identification of issues not previously mentioned in the literature. For example, an unexpect...
How can research on academic literacies throw light on the challenge to widen access to undergrad... more How can research on academic literacies throw light on the challenge to widen access to undergraduate science studies? This article explores what an academic literacies approach might mean in the context of undergraduate physics. The study examines the pedagogical practices and student learning in two undergraduate Physics courses, a mainstream and an extended course, with a particular focus on the disciplinary practice of problem-solving. Concepts from the sociology of knowledge, specifically Legitimation Code Theory, offer a useful analytical framework for characterising the movement between abstract principles and concrete contexts in problem-solving and understanding how meaning is encapsulated in the dense representations of physics. The study shows that with more time and careful pedagogical attention, the extended course was able to make more explicit the literacy practices and epistemological functioning of the discipline. The study found that the extended course adopted a m...
Drawing on the South African case, this book looks at shifts in higher education around the world... more Drawing on the South African case, this book looks at shifts in higher education around the world in the last two decades. In South Africa, calls for transformation have been heard in the university since the last days of apartheid. Similar claims for quality higher education to be made available to all have been made across the African continent. In spite of this, inequalities remain and many would argue that these have been exacerbated during the Covid pandemic. Understanding Higher Education: Alternative Perspectives responds to these calls by arguing for a social account of teaching and learning by contesting dominant understandings of students as ‘decontextualised learners’ premised on the idea that the university is a meritocracy. This book tackles the issue of teaching and learning by looking both within and beyond the classroom. It looks at how higher education policies emerged from the notion of the knowledge economy in the newly democratic South Africa, and how national qu...
2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access Proceedings
Town. Her research on the student experience of learning, focusing mainly on science and engineer... more Town. Her research on the student experience of learning, focusing mainly on science and engineering education, has been published across a range of journal articles in higher education and her recent book, Researching student learning in higher education: A social realist approach published in 2013 by Routledge. She holds an academic development post in the Department of Chemical Engineering at UCT, and teaches in the undergraduate programme there. She is a coordinating editor for the international journal Higher Education and a co-editor for the Routledge/SRHE series Research into Higher Education.
African Journal of Research in Mathematics, Science and Technology Education, 2003
This study examines the factors that influenced first-year students in the Department of Mechanic... more This study examines the factors that influenced first-year students in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Cape Town to follow a career in mechanical engineering. The data were collected over two years from first year students during the first week of each academic year as part of a questionnaire that asked various questions relating to the students' choice of what and where to study. A qualitative analysis of the responses resulted in ten categories of influence being developed: "exposure to engineering career", "school subjects", "socialisers", "if not, then…", "specific career plan", "career rewards", "flexibility and challenge", "physical activities", "intellectual activities" and "social identity". These were subsequently grouped into four macro-categories: "societal influences", "personal career vision", "product related activities" and "social/civic responsibility". A quantitative analysis showed significant differences between the responses on the basis of race and gender. The results of this study show that different factors influence particular groups of learners during their career choice process. Focused interventions around these factors can serve to encourage more learners to follow a career in mechanical engineering.
Journal- South African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy
Gold has been demonstrated as a possible catalyst for oxidation reactions. Some evidence for a po... more Gold has been demonstrated as a possible catalyst for oxidation reactions. Some evidence for a possible promotion effect of platinum has also been recorded. The influence of platinum as promoter for Au/γ-Al2O3 prepared via anionic ion-exchange for the oxidation of glycerol was investigated in a batch reactor at 60°C. It is inferred that the addition of platinum reduces the catalytic activity and the rate of deactivation, resulting in an overall higher final conversion of glycerol with increasing platinum loading. The addition of platinum to the catalyst favours the formation of the desired product, glyceric acid.
Journal- South African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy
A range of supported gold catalysts was prepared by ion exchange, varying many of the preparation... more A range of supported gold catalysts was prepared by ion exchange, varying many of the preparation variables, including concentration in the precursor solution, washing procedure, as well as drying and calcination procedures. These catalysts have been characterized extensively. TEM images show essentially the same crystallite size distributions, between 2–5 nm, for almost all catalysts, the only exception being catalysts not washed in ammonia, which did not show any small crystallites. Additional characterization with SEM yielded an interesting discovery. Catalysts that appear identical on the TEM also contain some large crystallites in the range of 50–500 nm. Differences in dispersion due to the drying procedure not seen on the TEM can now be observed. Oxygen chemisorption is being investigated as an additional method to characterize gold based catalysts to complement the typically used electron microscope techniques.
Teaching in Higher Education, 2010
EJ893334 - Being a Student Again: A Narrative Study of a Teacher.
Creating Conditions for Student Success: Social justice perspectives from a South African university, 2021
Journal of Education, 2015
The relationship between education research and the scholarship of teaching and learning (SOTL) i... more The relationship between education research and the scholarship of teaching and learning (SOTL) is still debated, while a distinction has been made between scholarly teaching and SOTL. This study compares and contrasts two programmes of work that took place in a particular 2nd year engineering course, both led by the author. The first programme was an educational research project investigating student learning in the course. The second programme was a period of teaching, leading to some SOTL output. Analysis of the knowledge drawn on in teaching, confirms that good university teaching is not a direct application of research findings but rather draws on a broad and largely tacit practical base of knowledge. The article also offers a deliberation on whether it is productive to maintain the distinction between education research and SOTL.
2020 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE), 2020
This full paper examines the potential for using LinkedIn profile analysis to understand engineer... more This full paper examines the potential for using LinkedIn profile analysis to understand engineers' everyday work activity. Calls for change in engineering education are often framed around perceptions of the changing nature of engineering work in present times. Existing research on engineering work, which draws on interviews, ethnography, case studies, or surveys, consistently highlights the social and contextual dimensions of practice, but also suggests that engineering work may have more to do with maintaining existing systems than with creative development of new systems. To add to this growing body of research, in this exploratory study we turn to a novel data source: publicly available descriptions of engineering work available on social networks and job posting sites. Such data sources, if found to be useful, could significantly expand the reach of research on engineering work and provide access to much larger data sets than those obtained through currentpredominantly qualitative-methods. This study is a preliminary look at using LinkedIn for these purposes. Specifically, we ask the question, "How does data about engineering work from LinkedIn compare to findings from in-depth interviews?" To answer this question, we use interviews with 15 new engineers at six and 12 months of work, and compare them to participants' LinkedIn profiles. The interviews, collected as part of a separate study, focused on newcomers' workplace responsibilities and challenges. Analysis focused on inductive coding to categorize engineers' work experiences and environments. The findings were then compared to participants' LinkedIn profiles to identify gaps and overlaps.
Jennifer Case is Head and Professor in the Department of Engineering Education at Virginia Tech. ... more Jennifer Case is Head and Professor in the Department of Engineering Education at Virginia Tech. She holds an honorary position at the University of Cape Town. Her research on the student experience of learning, focusing mainly on science and engineering education, has been published across a range of journal articles in higher education and her recent book, Researching student learning in higher education: A social realist approach published in 2013 by Routledge. She holds an academic development post in the Department of Chemical Engineering at UCT, and teaches in the undergraduate programme there. She is a coordinating editor for the international journal Higher Education and a co-editor for the Routledge/SRHE series Research into Higher Education.
In what ways does access to undergraduate education have a transformative impact on people and so... more In what ways does access to undergraduate education have a transformative impact on people and societies? What conditions are required for this impact to occur? What are the pathways from an undergraduate education to the public good, including inclusive economic development? These questions have particular resonance in the South African higher education context, which is attempting to tackle the challenges of widening access and improving completion rates in in a system in which the segregations of the apartheid years are still apparent. Higher education is recognised in core legislation as having a distinctive and crucial role in building post-apartheid society. Undergraduate education is seen as central to addressing skills shortages in South Africa. It is also seen to yield significant social returns, including a consistent positive impact on societal institutions and the development of a range of capabilities that have public, as well as private, benefits. This book offers comp...
Changing Higher Education for a Changing World, 2020
2018 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition Proceedings
I am currently an "Academic Development Lecturer" in the Civil Engineering Department at the Univ... more I am currently an "Academic Development Lecturer" in the Civil Engineering Department at the University of Cape Town. The position involves curriculum development aimed at improving student performance and experience in engineering. This has directed my interest in graduate preparedness and led me to focus on design both at first and final year, and also how reasoning between the concrete and abstract can be implemented in disciplinary subjects.