COVID-19: ‘This is not the end of contact teaching’

“If the higher education sector believes that digital education should replace contact teaching and learning, it runs the risk of producing highly qualified people with severely underdeveloped human or social skills. They will just be robots.”

This was said by Dr Sizwe Mabizela, vice-chancellor of Rhodes University in South Africa, who was speaking at a webinar, “The impact of COVID-19 on different student groups”. Hosted by the vice-chancellors’ association Universities South Africa (USAf) in partnership with the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC), this event was moderated by Professor Crain Soudien, chief executive officer of the HSRC.

Discussions centred on the challenges of online teaching and learning and how the COVID-19 pandemic had magnified the stark inequalities in South Africa’s highly stratified post-school sector.

Due to the lockdown as a result of COVID-19, universities have had to scramble to put their course material online and this came with several challenges. Mabizela said reworking and adapting the curriculum for remote or online delivery materials that had originally been prepared for face-to-face teaching and learning had been nothing short of a “Herculean” task.

“Under normal circumstances, a complete shift to remote or online delivery is not ideal for a strong contact university like ours. This had to be done in a short space of time,” he said.

He pointed out that advantaged universities which had been using technology to support teaching and learning through blended course delivery had made the transition with relative ease. This is because they have the infrastructure, financial resources and expertise.

“Unfortunately, some, if not most, of the disadvantaged universities have not been able to make this transition to offer remote or online teaching and learning. This again underscores the pervasive and structural inequalities in our society, in general, and in our higher education institutions.”

For Mabizela, the challenges of access to digital devices such as laptops and tablets, stable and reliable access to internet connectivity, and access to and affordability of mobile data bundles were always going to be prevalent in the shift to digital or online course delivery.

The ongoing value of contact teaching

An offshoot of the pandemic and the lockdown is that “some might start to imagine that we have reached the end of a face-to-face or a contact university. Far from it.” Mabizela cautioned that the high dropout and failure rates that are experienced in distance learning institutions indicate that “it would be misguided to convert contact universities into remote or distance learning institutions”.

He referred to Rhodes University which has “the best pass and graduation rates of any South African university. This is in no small measure a result of being a highly residential and contact university. Contact universities offer more than just the delivery of teaching and learning materials. The holistic growth and general development of students is a significant focus in contact universities.”

Furthermore, an exciting aspect of a contact university experience is the opportunity to meet and interact with other students and learn from young people who come from different social, economic, geographic, linguistic and cultural backgrounds. “Contact universities provide important social space for young people to engage issues of national and global importance.”

He however conceded that universities will need to move towards a strongly blended approach in teaching and learning processes. “This will provide students with a richer, more diverse and more rewarding educational experience.”

Professor Ahmed Bawa, CEO of USAf, said the humanising role of universities, and nation-building, is best done face to face. “Globally, the jury is out on blended learning. It is not the panacea to all the problems we face in the long term. There are lots of writings around the huge contradictions around blended learning.”

Students call for reopening of campuses to poor students

Walter Sisulu University medical student and a Student Representative Council leader, Siphesihle Msomi said disabled students, international students and those from poor backgrounds are experiencing challenges transitioning to online learning due to a lack of electricity, connectivity and crowded living conditions. Despite efforts by universities to get devices to students, he conceded that not all students would be reached.

Msomi appealed to the universities’ leadership to prepare campuses to accommodate poor students who could then have access to computer labs and internet connectivity. This would be easier than purchasing laptops for students.

“No student should be left behind and there should be no academic exclusions for 2020 due to the challenges.”

USAf has adopted the principle of “no student being left behind”, according to Bawa, who said the academic calendar would be reconstituted to accommodate students who are not making progress with online learning.

Meanwhile, Professor Thierry Luescher of the HSRC and the University of the Free State, referred to a Global Student Affairs Impact Survey which revealed that, worldwide, many residences had been closed and some student affairs services’ provisions had moved online. “This had affected both teaching and learning as well as the services that help facilitate teaching and learning, student engagement, and related services.”

Uneven disadvantage/advantage

The survey found online learning is unevenly advantaging/disadvantaging students and even if student affairs services migrates online, it still reaches students differently. It recommends the prioritisation of the reopening of residences for the most “difficult to reach” student groups.

Dr Angelique Wildschut, senior manager for research and policy at the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS), which funds disadvantaged students based on the principles of access to quality education and success, said the organisation had continued with its access mandate and had paid out the bulk of allowances to students before the lockdown.

“We set up a virtual call centre and a WhatsApp platform to deal with queries. We also strengthened our social media platforms.” She said COVID-19 has allowed for introspection and the repurposing of organisations. “We reflected on how we could serve humanity better and how to exercise our mandate in a more comprehensive fashion,” she said.

NSFAS was mandated to roll out government-funded laptops to the students it funds, but the implementation of the directive proved challenging. It also revealed nuances in how different types of disadvantage can play out at different institutions, said Wildschut.

A proactive, rather than reactive approach

For Bawa, the movement to online teaching has allowed the sector to learn about infrastructure shortfalls and there is a need now to learn how to address this. He said universities globally have been placed under a “stress test”.

“We need to be careful that we do not slide into a reactive mode… We need to think of proactive and imaginative solutions,” he said.

He said the pandemic will come to an end. There is a need to deal with this short-term crisis. “What is being experienced is not a final product.” Universities are experiencing “emergency teaching” and should glean lessons on how to reach higher levels of online and blended learning in the future.

He stressed that now is not the time to imagine that the core functions of a university in the development of a new generation of intellectuals are going to be subsumed under the process of online learning. “We should not be re-conceptualising the role of universities in society at a time when we are under such stress. This might not be the best time to do it,” Bawa said.