Glenda Cox

Evaluating the use of synchronous communication in two blended courses

Residential universities are increasingly integrating online interaction within courses in the form of synchronous online chats, asynchronous online discussions and access to interactive resources. This article evaluates the educational effectiveness of online chats within a Humanities postgraduate course and a final year Commerce course. We consider the roles of course design, group dynamics, and facilitation style in the successful use of online collaboration within primarily face-to-face courses, as well as the potential for online collaboration within a blended course design to facilitate more inclusive learning conversations than are possible with exclusively face-to-face interaction.

Investigating Identity and Life Histories: Isotopic Analysis and Historical Documentation of Slave Skeletons Found on the Cape Town Foreshore, South Africa

Isotopic analysis of skeletons excavated during the 1950s has confirmed that they are the remains of shipwreck victims: slaves on board the Portuguese slaving brig Pacquet Real when it sank on 18 May 1818. Twenty-five slaves drowned and the remaining 133 became “Prize Negroes” at the Cape. The isotopic signatures are consistent with values expected for people living in an African village eating a terrestrially based diet. Analyses of different skeletal elements, i.e., teeth, long bone, and rib, are shown to be a valuable tool in tracing change or consistency in diet during a persons life, because different skeletal elements form at different stages of life and, subsequently, remodel at different rates. A comparison of isotope ratios from different skeletal elements indicates a change in diet in all these individuals, probably coincident with their enslavement. Variation between individuals in the isotopic composition of diets eaten early in life is sufficiently large to deduce heterogeneous origins for the group.

Stable carbon and nitrogen isotopic analyses of the underclass at the colonial Cape of Good Hope in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries

Analysis of the stable carbon and nitrogen isotope ratios of burials in a colonial cemetery in Cape Town, South Africa, reveals life histories of the underclass there. We are able to distinguish foreign from local-born people, and to infer social status, specifically slavery, by linking bone chemistry and somatic modification. This is the first use of bone chemistry to reconstruct the life histories of a mixed population of diverse origin, buried in a cosmopolitan colonial city. As such, it may be used as a guide for future work in other colonial sites.