Abstract:

The outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic across the globe has led to institutions of higher education having to rethink their programme offerings within an online teaching and learning space. This paradigm shift has led to unprecedented disruptions in teaching and learning, exacerbated by the lack of the necessary resources and digital literacy skills needed to successfully design and deliver academic programmes’ learning outcomes. This research proposes a theoretical model, based on Bourdieu’s cultural reproduction theory and Khan’s e-learning framework, to understand digital capital and its importance in higher education. An analysis of quantitative data collected at three contact-based universities in South Africa during the COVID-19 pandemic indicate that there are no significant differences across institutions about the ease of transition to the digital space during the pandemic. In particular, academics at all 3 institutions indicated difficulty in adapting to the location of teaching and learning delivery during this period, with a significant proportion (70%) engaged in face-to-face-teaching prior as compared to 83.3% using a distance learning approach during the pandemic although there is significant agreement across all three institutions that the academics possess the required digital capital (M=3.60, p<.001) for transitioning to the digital space. Though the response rate was low and the results can thus not be projected onto the general population, the data serves as background information for the future stages of the larger project. Specifically, this study’s identification of relevant capitals enables the researchers to construct suitable skills development resources that speak to the existing capitals already present in academics. The significance of this study is in establishing commonly present capitals in academics that should be strategically leveraged to ensure that resources provided are meaningful and impactful to minimise overall fatigue.

Keywords:

Digital Capital, Economic Capital, Social Capital, COVID-19.