Perception of Students Regarding the Support Received During Covid-19: A Case Study of One of the South African Rural Universities

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-006-0_8How to use a DOI?

Keywords

E-learning; COVID-19; Students support; Teaching; learning; emergency remote teaching; Technology Education

Abstract

The outbreak of COVID-19 and the lockdown of all activities forced the education systems across the world and particularly in South Africa to change the mode of teaching from face-to-face to online. This rapid shift has brought about many changes in all sectors, especially in the field of education. Universities across South Africa particularly contact institutions, were affected and enforced lockdowns that extremely prevent face-to-face interaction between teachers in the classroom and students. In the absence of face-to-face teaching and on-site student support, computer-based learning has emerged to substitute for offline teaching and student support. In contrast to such background, it is relevant to investigate students’ perceptions regarding the support received during Covid-19. This paper aims to report on students’ perceptions of the effectiveness of the support received during the Covid-19 pandemic and their readiness for emergency remote teaching (ERT) adopted by the University. Data were obtained during a pilot study involving 125 students from various levels on one campus of the institution; using an online survey with a standard Likert scale to determine the extent to which students were satisfied with the quality of support received. The results show that most participants agreed or strongly agreed that the support received was adequate. However, issues such as connectivity, data, lack of proper devices as well as personal challenges were raised. To mitigate these challenges, the institution put in place strategies for each Faculty to respond to students’ queries. This paper has implications for policymakers about student support.

Copyright

© 2023 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - M. Mbodila
AU  - T. Mfikoyi
AU  - O. A. Esan
AU  - M. Mbodila
PY  - 2023
DA  - 2023/02/07
TI  - Perception of Students Regarding the Support Received During Covid-19: A Case Study of One of the South African Rural Universities
BT  - Proceedings of The Focus Conference (TFC 2022)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 87
EP  - 98
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-006-0_8
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-006-0_8
ID  - Mbodila2023
ER  -