Universities prepare for online teaching and learning

Despite differences in resourcing, traditional and comprehensive public universities in South Africa, physically shuttered since 16 March owing to the nationwide lockdown, are doing their best to honour their pledge to complete the 2020 academic year, with most announcing the switch to online teaching and learning activities with effect from Monday 20 April.

At a meeting of the Universities South Africa Board of Directors on 24 March, vice-chancellors of public universities made a “consensus commitment” to do all in their power to complete the 2020 academic year, and adhere to a common reopening date across the system – 20 April.

Those announcing their intention to resume academic programmes online on Monday include the University of the Witwatersrand, Stellenbosch University, the University of Cape Town, the University of Pretoria, University of the Free State, the University of Johannesburg, the University of the Western Cape and Rhodes University. North-West University said on its website it will start on 22 April, and Nelson Mandela University on 28 April.

Most of the universities' schedules include a period of orientation for students.

A later start

In a statement on 9 April, the University of KwaZulu-Natal, a five-campus institution with an enrolment of approximately 47,000 students, said the start of online learning was still to be decided “following further discussions and consultations with the student community”, but a process to transfer academic course material onto virtual platforms would be completed by the end of April.

University of KwaZulu-Natal staff told University World News they are working towards a tentative start date of 4 May, although some teaching and learning was already under way.

The University of KwaZulu-Natal was hard hit by violent student protests at the start of the academic year in January which shut down some campuses and halted the academic programme. It had only just started “settling to normality”, as its vice-chancellor, Professor Nana Poku, said in a recent letter to parents, when the coronavirus shutdowns struck.

Seventy-eight percent of the student body receives National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) funding which means that their total household income is less than ZAR350,000 (US$18,600) per annum.

The University of KwaZulu-Natal has established a ‘Hardship Fund’ aimed at providing food and menstrual hygiene products to staff and students, with the university’s vice-chancellor being the first to contribute to the fund by pledging a third of his monthly salary for the next three months.

Poku joins Rhodes University and University of Johannesburg vice-chancellors, Sizwe Mabizela and Tshilidzi Marwala respectively, who have indicated they will, like the state president Cyril Ramaphosa and his cabinet ministers, donate a third of their salaries for three months to the national COVID-19 Solidarity Fund.

Students’ response

In a response to the proposed online teaching and learning programme from the University of KwaZulu-Natal Student Representative Council last week, the student body highlighted the fact that first-entry NSFAS-funded students had not received laptops in accordance with their grant provisions.

Other problems facing students when it came to online learning included a lack of internet connectivity in rural areas, lack of electricity, lack of conducive environments in which to study and inability to afford data, the document said.

The student council suggested that a “Wi-Fi routers rollout” be considered as the provision of data bundles did “not fulfil the intended need unless the data bundle deal will come with routers”. It also suggested an immediate return of students to residences upon the end of the lockdown, the introduction after lockdown of some contact learning alongside online learning and the “cancellation” of the first semester.

Meanwhile, in an attempt to involve its students in creative solutions, the University of KwaZulu-Natal launched a student competition on 14 April 2020 for the “best five ideas to deliver lectures online for all”. The competition calls on students to come up with ideas for how to deliver accessible lectures for all students irrespective of their physical location, how clinical and laboratory work could be conducted online, as well as practicals, and how assessments could be conducted to test the grasp of learning content.

Entries close on 21 April and the top prize for teamwork is ZAR150,000 (US$8,000) while an individual winner will secure full tuition for a year.

Access to computers and devices

While the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits University) has indicated that between 10% and 15% of Wits students do not have access to appropriate computing devices, adequate access to data or conducive learning environments, this figure is closer to 30% at the University of the Western Cape.

Professor Vivienne Lawack, acting vice-chancellor of the University of the Western Cape (UWC), an institution classified in South African parlance as ‘historically disadvantaged’ (formerly a university for Coloureds under apartheid), said while the university was committed to following the “sectoral approach as agreed on by all universities”, it had adapted its plan to suit the institution’s “unique circumstances” and would be orientating staff and students to this “type of flexi-learning, using a phased-in approach”.

She said while the university has devised a “comprehensive plan to ensure that students complete the 2020 academic year”, the harsh reality was that 30% of its 24,000-strong student body did not have access to laptops, or even to data, while on lockdown at home. It appealed for donations of funds and laptops to ensure that “no student will be left behind”.

Lawack said UWC has one of the lowest tuition fee structures in South Africa “because we pride ourselves as a university that prioritises access for deserving students…. Consequently, we do not have the resources that some of the more established institutions have at their disposal.”

While differences in resourcing between universities exist, inequality among students within single institutions is also an issue, with all universities taking measures to address challenges related to the lack of appropriate mobile computing devices and access to data among students.

Uneven playing fields

In a statement released last week, Wits University said it was aware that “the playing field” was uneven.

“We understand that our emergency remote teaching and learning plan has to take into consideration the different learning environments of our students and their access to learning resources, appropriate devices and data,” said Professor Ruksana Osman, deputy vice-chancellor: academic.

Some universities, including Wits and the universities of Cape Town, Pretoria and Stellenbosch, had devised a scheme to lend computers and mobile learning devices to students in most need, and all of them had negotiated agreements with at least some of the major telecommunication service providers to zero-rate certain educational websites.

University of Pretoria Vice-Chancellor Tawana Kupe said the university was also working with the country’s broadcasters to explore using “some of the available channels for teaching and learning”.

Wits said it would explore “high intensity immersion classes” when contact teaching resumed or recalibrate the almanac to make up for the loss of practicals and laboratory-based classes.

Where students had no access to any device or data, delivery of paper-based material was being considered in addition to the extension of face-to-face lectures during the September and December vacation breaks, and possibly into the new year, the university said.

Examinations

A number of universities have indicated they are not planning to hold traditional examinations at the end of the semester.

The University of Pretoria said that even if normal campus activities resume by the time of the scheduled examination period, “preference should be given to [online] alternatives to traditional invigilated examinations, where feasible”.

It said special arrangements will be made for traditional, invigilated examinations where these are essential for professional or other accreditation or licensing purposes or for any other valid reason.

Stellenbosch University said for students who cannot complete the semester online due to online connectivity issues [device or internet or both], “a re-run” of the first semester’s modules in hybrid learning mode will be available in the second half of 2020, with examination opportunities in January 2021.

“Where a semester 1 module is a prerequisite for admission to a semester 2 module, students will be allowed to continue with semester 2, irrespective of having passed the prerequisite module or not,” it said.

The University of Cape Town said there will be no formal invigilated exams at the end of the semester. Instead, assessment will be continuous during the term and you will need to obtain duly performed (DP) credit in your courses.

“The courses you take online will be graded as Pass or Fail (no marks will be assigned). This will not hurt your chances of getting a distinction when you graduate,” said Associate Professor Lis Lange, University of Cape Town deputy vice-chancellor for teaching and learning, in a 27 March online statement.

She said students were not expected to carry the same workload online as they would have had face-to-face, and online learning would be asynchronous.

Historically disadvantaged

For historically disadvantaged universities, the situation is more difficult. For example, while no date has been announced on the University of Venda website, notices from the university indicate it has developed a protocol to guide staff and students and a programme of e-mentoring and e-tutoring is ongoing.

At Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University in Pretoria North, online teaching is scheduled for 4 May after a period of student orientation. The university has said clinical teaching will be suspended during the lockdown and continued “later in the year”.

University of Fort Hare Vice-Chancellor Professor Sakhela Buhlungu said in an online statement on 15 April that a date for the reopening of the university would be “announced in due course” and encouraged students to engage with “online materials as far as possible to keep abreast of … academic work”.

An online statement by the university’s deputy vice-chancellor for academic affairs, Professor Renuka Vithal, indicated the university had imposed a moratorium on assessments during the lockdown given “very real concerns about students lacking connectivity, devices and adequate work space”.

* University World News – Africa is planning more coverage of these issues as they relate to universities of technology and other universities.