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Background. One of the more discernible needs that challenges universities is addressing the level of preparedness of students entering the higher education environment. Students expect to participate in active learning, while at the same time adopting a certain level of agency to successfully pass through higher education. Objective. To determine the relationship between student preparedness, learning experiences and agency of students in the Faculty of Community and Health Sciences (FCHS), University of the Western Cape (UWC), Cape Town, South Africa. Methods. A cross-sectional study was conducted on 266 (N=578) conve nience sampled 3rd-year students in the FCHS. Data were collected with an instrument constructed from items of evaluation from the departments in the FCHS and other validated instruments. Results. Findings suggest that 3rd-year students perceive themselves as moderately prepared on enrolling at UWC (mean (SD) 13.74 (1.86)); current learning experiences are favourably indicated (94.04 (15.32)). On average, students perceive themselves to be agents of their own learning (51.56 (8.79)). Furthermore, a significantly positive relationship was found between learning experiences and agency. Conclusion. This study broadens our understanding of the Vygotskian perspective of the zone of proximal development, where students bring their own knowledge, interact with lecturers who scaffold their learning, and then become agents in their own learning.

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This open-access article is distributed under Creative Commons licence CC-BY-NC 4.0.

Social media usage has caused a notable shift in the use of strategies and relevant tools with which to communicate with sport spectators, catapulting sports into one of the most read topics on social media. This rapid growth of social media in sport has stimulated research in this field of study, delineating the different parts of social media, including social networking sites, and creating opportunities for university sport departments to foster relationships between university sport and student spectators. The purpose of this study was to identify the social networking sites used by student spectators in university sport. Based on a cross-sectional research design, a modified survey was distributed electronically to a randomly selected sample of 540 full-time registered students at the University of the Western Cape. The findings indicated that WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram were the most popular social networking sites used by student spectators in university sport. This study concluded that the three social networking sites were the most preferred among student spectators. Therefore, this research provides higher education institutions the opportunity to leverage off the students' usage of social networking sites for marketing purposes. The study recommends the need for social media-based marketing strategies by university sports departments to be targeted at social networking sites visited by student spectators.