Abstract:

Most people are resistant to change if it is imposed by someone or something else. The COVID-19 pandemic was a catalyst for change, especially in the domains of teaching, learning and assessment. The majority of higher education institutions (HEIs) were forced to transition from face-to-face (F2F) teaching, learning and assessment to emergency remote teaching (ERT), learning and assessments in the online sphere. Not all HEIs were prepared for this transition.
South Africa, being an emerging market, is on the wrong side of the digital divide. Furthermore, South Africa is plagued by poverty and unemployment. In addition, the World Bank claimed that South Africa was the most unequal nation, there being a vast difference between the rich and the poor. Moreover, the inequalities at public HEIs in South Africa, remnants of apartheid, further emphasised the digital divide. Thus, some of the previously advantaged HEIs were in a far better position to transition from F2F to online. As such, the COVID-19 pandemic was one of the biggest constraints faced by HEIs.

Like other South African HEIs, the University of Zululand rose up to the challenges of ERT and implemented plans for online teaching, learning and assessment. The online learning management system (LMS) used by the institution was upgraded, workshops were arranged to train academics, students were assisted to acquire electronic devices and the institution commenced with an online teaching, learning and assessment strategy. In this regard, the COVID-19 pandemic was an enabler as it demanded change irrespective of whether lecturers wanted to embrace technology or not. Academics who had not previously utilised the LMS or did not want to utilise the LMS for the purpose of teaching, learning and assessment were forced to do so in order to save the academic year and to make sure that “no student was left behind”. Accordingly, the COVID-19 pandemic hastened lecturers' adoption of technology as part of their teaching, learning and assessment strategy.

Academics at the University of Zululand were provided with numerous training workshops designed to develop their teaching and assessment skills, practices and competencies in the online environment. In this regard COVID-19 was enabler resulting in the upskilling of academics.

The majority of the academics believed that the online environment did not protect the integrity of assessments. Thus, this was deemed a constraint. Although the University invested in technology to ensure integrity in assessments, overwhelmingly academics did not consider the technology as either sufficient or appropriate. Others used the online environment to adapt their assessment methods and to learn new skills or hone their skills in this regard.

Academics who fully embraced the transition from F2F to online experimented to ensure learning takes place. They introduced innovative methods of teaching and assessment and sought ways to ensure that students remained academically engaged amidst the chaos around them caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Multi-media resources were developed or found online to afford the students ontological and epistemological access to knowledge.

In this paper, two senior lecturers in the Department of Law at the University of Zululand reflect on how the COVID-19 pandemic was simultaneously a disrupter and an enabler for learning.

Keywords:

LMS, online teaching and learning, South African higher education institutes.