Abstract:

Higher education has undergone various notions since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic with scholars longing for post covid innovations to sustain curriculum practice, including the movement of student academic support services toward curriculum practice activities to hybrid approach. First year students, tend to face tremendous pressure to adapt to tertiary environment, including adapting to remote learning. These students are faced with the impasse of how to navigate the new environment which is aggravated by the understanding of learning to apply remote learning as a set of transition from face-to-face learning. For students to succeed in the new environment, the relationship through interactions and free attitude discussions between first year students , senior peers and student academic support becomes an increased need to ensure and create access through support aimed to enable success in their becoming. The aim of the study is to create an intervention strategy through academic advising to enable learning and provide support for transit to hybrid learning as the new normal approach to teaching and learning in the tertiary institution. The study is rooted in ubuntu as a theoretical framework coaching the processes. The project employs participatory action research methodology as a form of education science to arrive at the following findings: to encourage discussions collectively to transform the understanding of pre-service teachers, to enable engagement in hybrid learning as curriculum that is in practice in the post covid environment. The paper concludes by advocating for innovative ideas to enable progress and development of new techniques that might be used to support the academic and social integration of first year pre-service teachers. The findings have implications for curriculum reformist on academic advising.

Keywords:

Academic advising, new normal, action research, pre-service teachers, ubuntu.