News about and for students from home and around the world.<\/p>\n
SA medical students in Russia resort to studying from online sources<\/strong><\/p>\n Medical students from Mpumalanga, who left to study at Astrakhan State Medical University in Russia last year, are having to resort to Youtube, Google and Wikipedia to learn. In a WhatsApp conversation with City Press, the Mpumalanga Students Committee also alleged that their Russian lecturers had only basic English and could not engage with the students; that there was no clinical training and that they had not received testbooks.<\/p>\n \u201cThis university started English-medium lectures in 2013. They\u2019re not ready and equipped to teach in English. This looks like a waste of time and we would like to be transferred to another institution,\u201d said one student representative. Another stated that \u201cWe get embarrassed because we can\u2019t do practical things that doctors should be able to perform on patients. The university has even said that they can\u2019t prepare us for the HPCSA (Health Professions Council of South Africa) board exam\u201d. To date there has been no reponse from the Mpumalanga education department to questions on what is being done to aid the 53 students.<\/p>\n Russia recently unveiled a plan to attract more foreign students<\/a> to its 650 state universities. – Read the full story on the City Press<\/a> site<\/p>\n Technology transfer boost for least developed countries<\/strong><\/p>\n The United Nations this month launched the Technology Bank, which will work with universities to boost scientific research and development across Africa\u2019s \u2018least developed countries\u2019 (LDCs).<\/p>\n “Universities have a dual role to play in the developing countries: not only creating new knowledge, but more importantly to work with the local industries to absorb and make adaptations of the foreign technologies transferred from international sources,” Technology Bank director Xiaolan Fu said.<\/p>\n LDCs make up about 12% of the world\u2019s population and 38 of the 48 countries are African. According to a United Nations study<\/a>, LDCs had a significant lack of published scientific journals and lagged most other countries on patents and recognisable research. Taking this into consideration, the bank will facilitate access to journal publications in African universities at no cost to help disseminate knowledge among researchers. – Read the full article on the University World News<\/a> site.<\/p>\n Australian universities ditch \u201cgender-specific\u201d words<\/strong><\/p>\n Several universities across Australia have chosen to publish guidelines to stamp out discriminatory language on campus and in written assignments.<\/p>\n Perth\u2019s Curtin University is using \u201cinclusive language procedures\u201d that staff and students are required to follow. Deputy vice-chancellor Jill Downie said the policy provided guidance to staff and students to ensure they were speaking and writing in an inclusive manner. \u201cThe Student Charter and the Staff Code of Conduct set out the behavioural expectations in relation to students and staff, including a requirement to avoid behaviours which constitute discrimination and harassment,\u201d she said. Students could face losing marks if they use language stereotyping people on their gender. \u201cHousewife\u201d and \u201cmankind\u201d are just two of the words that are discouraged.<\/p>\n Students attending CQUniversity are encouraged to use \u201chumans\u201d as a generic term instead of the more common \u201cman\u201d , as well as \u201cworkforce\u201d instead of \u201cmanpower\u201d and \u201cartificial\u201d in place of \u201cman-made\u201d. These are part of a list of gender neutral alternatives that were introduced by the University. The University of Wollongong encourages people to avoid patronising expressions such as \u201cthe office girls\u201d or colloquialisms such as \u201cdarl\u201d, \u201cdoll\u201d and \u201clove\u201d.<\/p>\n While the University of Sydney\u2019s Department of Gender and Cultural Studies have published a guide insisting that gender neutral language be used, even if it is grammatically wrong. An example being: \u201cIf a student wants their results early, they should go to the student centre.\u201d Although this last sentence is grammatically incorrect, in speech it has become common practice to use the pronoun \u2018they\u2019 when referring to a generic person. – Read the full article on the News.Com.au<\/a> site<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" News about and for students from home and around the world. SA medical students in Russia resort to studying from online sources Medical students from Mpumalanga, who left to study at Astrakhan State Medical University in Russia last year, are having to resort to Youtube, Google and Wikipedia to learn. In a WhatsApp conversation with City […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":4711,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[66,310,30,246,59,68],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentnews.africa\/sng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6346"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentnews.africa\/sng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentnews.africa\/sng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentnews.africa\/sng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/42"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentnews.africa\/sng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/studentnews.africa\/sng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6346\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentnews.africa\/sng\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentnews.africa\/sng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentnews.africa\/sng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentnews.africa\/sng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}