Online teaching in response to student protests and campus shutdowns: academics’ perspectives

Abstract

During the period 2015-2017, student protests and university shutdowns rocked the higher education sector in South Africa, with key issues being raised regarding student exclusion based on financial, epistemological and cultural grounds. In this highly politicised and contested environment, some universities decided to use blended and online delivery as a strategy to enable the academic year to be completed and all curriculum to be covered, despite the disruptions. This was a controversial decision politically and a challenging one practically. From the perspective of the academics at the University of Cape Town (UCT), this paper draws on interviews with educators in three broad disciplinary areas to explore their views, practices, and experiences regarding the use of online materials in these unique circumstances. Activity Theory provides a framework to consider the issues systemically and to identify the tensions and contradictions in the system.

Needs a little TLC: examining college students’ emergency remote teaching and learning experiences during COVID-19

“…Our participants also asserted that the delayed/cancelled internship or hands-on experiences, such as lab class and service learning, negatively impact their continued education or career advancement (Onyema et al 2020). Besides, our participants enunciated a great need to stay connected as a whole learning community, as articulated in previous research (Czerniewicz, Trotter, andHaupt 2019: Lorenzo 2008). School settings are not a mere physical space, but a social hub of human interactions and connections that are essential to learning and development (UNESCO 2020c).…”

“…Pivoting education online during crises is not new. For instance, universities in New Orleans in the U.S. provided online courses in response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005 (Lorenzo 2008), and students were provided with blended and online learning during student protests and university shutdowns between 2015 and 2017 in South Africa (Czerniewicz, Trotter, and Haupt 2019). However, the current situation is unique.…”

“…A study examining the online learning or blended learning experiences during Hurricane Katrina in 2005 reported that the student-to-student interactions and class dialogues in virtual learning environments created an opportunity for the students to provide emotional support to each other and thus maintain well-being (Lorenzo 2008). Czerniewicz, Trotter, and Haupt (2019) examined the transition to online learning due to student protest in South Africa and noted the benefit of online learning to maintain academic continuity as well as the importance of considering students' socioemotional needs and digital inequities. Researchers, who investigated crisis planning and student learning during previous crises, remarked that 'with proper support, students and instructors moving into the online learning environment due to a crisis could successfully recover with fewer obstacles' (Holzweiss et al 2020).…”

Conflicting logics of online higher education

“…Universities can unbundle on their own, offering individual credit-bearing modules outside bounded disciplinary curricula, or in partnership with OPM providers, offering MOOCs or credit-bearing courses or programmes. Proponents of unbundling suggest that the disaggregation of television and music production and its re-aggregation as on-demand digital content like Netflix or Spotify could represent a template for universities (Craig 2015;McIntosh 2018).…”

“…Unbundling -the disaggregation of educational provision and its delivery, often via digital technologies -has promised to address inequalities and challenge elitism in higher education (Rizvi, Donnely, and Barber 2013;Craig 2015). Yet how does unbundling develop in contexts with deeply rooted historical inequalities and asymmetric distribution of economic and reputational capital in and among public universities?…”