THE RISE OF ONLINE LEARNING DURING COVID-19 PANDEMIC

By: Ethel Malatji

Email: ethelsiphiwe@gmail.com

University is a place where students live and study close proximately to each other. They are buzzing cultural hubs where students are brought together from nations around the world. Recently, the foundation of this unique ecosystem has been impacted significantly by the rapid spread of the coronavirus (Covid-19) outbreak, regarding the implications for higher education.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on the education sector in South Africa, as universities across the country shut down, leaving many students feeling vulnerable.

When the pandemic hit and countries began to go into lockdown, our university quickly moved to a fully online delivery model. However, the obvious and immediate challenge we faced was student connectivity. Many of our students, even those in urban centers, struggled with data access for them to fully participate in their online learning.

Though the university designed our system to be asynchronous, meaning students could log in and participate in their own time, connectivity was still a challenge. Some of our students could only log on late at night during off-peak hours. Others live in areas where connectivity is inaccessible due to cost issues. Others struggled to get access to the internet at all. 

Some universities have gone as far as to deliver devices, tablets or smartphones, to their students at home to enable them to continue to engage online. Many institutions gave students data bundles so that connectivity would not be an issue or major obstacle to their continuing to learn.

The move to online learning has affected not just libraries, they have worked hard to put in place extra online study support. Where access to libraries is still possible, they have been made as safe as possible for borrowers online learning also affected examinations, as universities worked hard on putting in place viable alternatives to on-site exams. 

This has raised many issues, on how to ensure that different assessment methods can be introduced in ways that assess students fairly, without detriment to their performance. Universities have tried to embrace these changes as quickly as they could, without sacrificing quality and fairness for speed of implementation.

“Online learning was stressful, it forced us to adapt to working independently and it had its struggles because some are from rural areas, and we missed online classes due to network in the rural. Online learning had a negative impact because most of our practicals were converted to theory”, said Itumeleng Mokoena, a student

Oratile Kekana said that, as a first-year university student last year, COVID-19 affected her badly because she was used to studying traditionally rather than doing things online. So online was a challenge as she couldn’t manage to attend some of my classes due to technical issues.

“It was hard at first, I couldn’t find my balance between studying and having time away from my books, so I tried so hard to balance everything that was going on in my life at that time, made a timetable with everything that I had to do daily”, added Matshidiso Selebeleng.