“Working from home is one major disaster”: An analysis of student feedback at a South African university during the Covid-19 lockdown

Abstract

The Covid-19 global pandemic has resulted in many countries moving teaching and learning online. South Africa is a country with major inequalities in terms of access to electricity, internet and information technologies, which have created considerable problems for online learning at institutions of higher learning in the country. In this paper, we analyse student feedback from two large undergraduate English courses at a school of Education of a major South African university. We specifically focus on two qualitative questions which asked students about the challenges they faced and the skills they developed in online learning. Results are considered through the lens of critical digital pedagogies and decolonisation. Our findings indicate that a lack of access and resources, disruptive home environments and unfamiliarity with online learning methods were significant obstacles for students. In addition, many students indicated developing computer skills and learning how to use online resources during the courses. The study suggests that online teaching and learning in South Africa and similar contexts exacerbates inequalities, and must be accompanied by rigorous support structures for students who are vulnerable in these contexts.

Emergency Remote Teaching in Unequal Contexts: Reflections on Student Feedback on Two Online Courses during the Covid-19 Lockdown in South Africa

“…This lack of material resources impacted on multiple dimensions of the course for this student, as they were unable to complete quizzes in time or type their responses to forum tasks. The struggles with internet access also affected this student, as with many other students in the course (see [5] for a more detailed discussion of student challenges in this context). Thus, students from rural or under-resourced backgrounds would have had wide-ranging challenges that were beyond the capabilities of lecturers to address.…”

“…In the case of an unequal society like South Africa, effective and accessible instruction for diverse groups became particularly challenging during ERT. A great number of students live in rural or semiurban "township" areas with limited internet access, poor mobile connectivity, unstable electricity supply and overcrowded living conditions that make learning incredibly difficult [5]. Our online courses thus had to cater to the needs of these students through providing effective teaching strategies in emergency conditions.…”

“…Secondly, students often do not possess the necessary cognitive resources to interact with online learning; these include literacy, numeracy and information literacy skills. We have indicated in a previous paper how problematic the assumption of the "digital native" is in relation to vulnerable students [5]. Finally, students often lack the necessary social resources to effectively engage with online learning; this includes having social connections with individuals from similar social settings who have access to, and interact with, ICTs.…”

Using a historical memoir to improve curriculum coherence in teacher education: The case of Trevor Noah's Born a Crime

“…is meant that we had an ethical imperative to ensure that textual resources could be repurposed across multiple modules. In addition, students reported severe challenges in balancing workloads and expectations for their di erent modules (Godsell, 2020;Fouche & Andrews, 2022). erefore, we decided to encourage deep engagement with a single text of substantial length rather than over-burdening the students (many of whom were still navigating challenges of remote learning).…”

Social support, self-efficacy and academic satisfaction of university students during the COVID-19 lockdown

“…All areas of society's functioning changed, including education (Adeshola and Agoyi, 2022;. This phenomenon forced the lockdown of many populations in the world during the months of March to May 2020, causing educational practices to be developed digitally (e-learning education), compared to the face-to-face system mostly used previously (e.g., Belamghari, 2022;Benalcázar et al, 2022;Fouche and Andrews, 2022;Martin et al, 2022;Osmani, 2021;Şahin, 2021;Sharma et al, 2020). This was an important challenge for the three main agents involved in the educational system: (a) for students, in terms of acquiring a greater command of information and communication technologies (ICT), applied to the context of teaching-learning; (b) for teachers, because not all of them had sufficient knowledge and mastery of the necessary tools to successfully carry out teaching in digital format; and (c) for institutions (universities), which were forced, in an accelerated manner, to provide resources, install platforms, and develop training activities for all members of the university community (Cleland et al, 2020;Gantasala et al, 2022;Heo et al, 2021).…”