Video Presentation Created Based on a Seminar

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UKZN’s University Technology Enhanced Learning (UTEL) unit in collaboration with Professor Kriben Pillay of the Leadership Discipline in the Graduate School of Business and Leadership created a video presentation based on a seminar.

The seminar, The Illusion of Solid and Separate Things: Troublesome Knowledge and the Curriculum, was hosted by the University Teaching and Learning Office (UTLO) in August 2018 and then presented as a keynote address at the University of York’s Nursing Curriculum Workshop in November 2018.

Said Pillay: ‘The seminar, in turn, was based on my chapter in the 2016 book, Disrupting Higher Education Curriculum: Undoing Cognitive Damage, edited by Dr Rubby Dhunpath, Professor Michael Samuel and Professor Nyna Amin, in which I interrogate the current materialistic paradigm that dominates education globally, and which further entrenches what Einstein called “the optical delusion of consciousness”, that is our deeply rooted stories of separation,’ said Pillay.

‘It occurred to me that while I had a PowerPoint presentation with supporting video material, a video realisation could make the presentation more interesting visually, and, given the seeming counter-intuitive proposition that we are not discrete, separate entities living in a world of separate things, a video could act like poetry and affect us more than just intellectually,’ said Pillay. ‘The addition of an unrehearsed, spontaneous dialogue in the video with my former post-doctoral student, Dr Kriyanka Moodley, complements the original seminar.’

Video editor at UTEL, Mr Njabulo Dladla, who creatively directed the video conversion from the PowerPoint format said: ‘Initially, we had a rather complex yet exciting concept for the video which was going to have a rather surrealistic feel as Professor Pillay is a magician and explained the concept in a rather surrealistic manner, using illusions to make his point. However, after I realised that he had a pre-made PowerPoint presentation and just wanted us to make it visually exciting, we had to narrow the concept down to a virtual set with screens for displays, but we still sneaked in some surrealism in the art direction, where having a couch, two lamps and a seamless floor, all set in a distant location, hopefully gives the viewer the sense of boundlessness and non-separation which is being pointed to in the seminar.’

UTEL project manager, Mr Jasper Cecile said that while they had recorded many seminars and panel discussions in the studio, this was the first conversion that was done.

UTLO’s Dhunpath remarked that he hoped this project would inspire other academics to do something similar and thereby share their academic presentations in the public domain.

‘I am particularly pleased that Professor Pillay, with his performance background, has offered to assist others who want to create such videos, especially in the areas of scripting and presentation,’ said Dhunpath.

Ms Devi Nanen of the University of York, who co-hosted Pillay’s visit last year, said she found the video ‘amazing, easy to follow and well-articulated’. She added that ‘we should find a use for the video in our teaching.’

The video can be viewed at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnzddHwk8Lk

Words: Ndabaonline

Photograph: Supplied