Today the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Higher Education, Science and Technology will receive a briefing from the Minister of Higher Education, Blade Nzimande, on his Department’s Save the Academic Year plan in light of the Covid-19 lockdown. The Democratic Alliance (DA) will use this opportunity to present the Minister with our proposals for all students to have access to resources for e-learning during the lockdown as well as our proposals to ensure a smooth continuation of the academic year post lockdown.
Institutions of higher education commenced with their various e-learning programmes this week. While the DA welcomes the Department of Higher Education, Science and Innovation’s decision to take tertiary education online to mitigate the effects of the pandemic on the academic year, we are concerned that there has been a lack of proper planning and preparation which will delay the academic programme.
We don’t want any student to be left behind and remain concerned that some students may not have the necessary resources for online learning. In the long-term, mobile phones are not adequate devices for studying, or to submit projects. Some students are living in areas with poor connectivity and may not be able to access their learning material, while others don’t have optimal learning environments at home. And some students simply do not have adequate spaces within their homes where they can concentrate or study.
The DA will the committee briefing as an opportunity to present its Blue Book recommendations that government can implement in order to address the challenges in higher education brought about by the lockdown. Some of our recommendations on e-learning include:
- That the Minister engages with his Communications counterpart on how partner in relooking the spectrum to ensure that students in remote areas can access networks to ensure that their geographical location does not impede students from accessing online learning;
- This will require full cooperation and buy-in from cell phone companies to strengthen network coverage and to ensure easy access to zero-rate Moodle sites linked to higher education and NSFAS;
- A database must be compiled of registered students, so they benefit from decreased data prices to access research sites or online textbooks;
- Institutions should partner with the Department of Basic Education for access to internet hubs or remote computer labs in different districts; and
- We recommend that part of the emergency funding for COVID obtained from the IMF be allocated to NSFAS to assist it in coping with any additional costs involved.
A further concern is how the academic programme will proceed once the lockdown is eased. The DA will therefore also recommend the following proposals to Minister Nzimande that the Department should consider post-lockdown:
- Institutions that were able to successfully implement e-learning during the hard lockdown, should continue with online teaching, or partial online teaching, for as long as possible, including during “soft” lockdowns, with the exception of courses that require practical training. These can re-start during the “soft” lockdown periods, with strict social distancing and the use of PPE;
- The reopening of institutions should take place in a phased manner, by prioritizing final-year students and students with strong practical components to their courses. This is because these students must graduate this year, to make room for the next cohort of students coming up from Matric;
- Classes may be split up and lectures repeated in order to make sure that classrooms are not fully capacitated– or Zoom could be used to give lectures to students not actually in classrooms in order to thin the numbers down. The simultaneous use of face to face and Zoom classes is one possibility;
- Institutions should look at extending the academic week to include Saturdays and evening classes – in accordance to social distancing measures and with the necessary security;
- A shortened exam period should be held as soon as classes end (no exam study period); and
- Institutions should aim to release their results in early January so that supplementary exams are still able to be organized.
For many students, this period of uncertainty has derailed their future plans and have placed additional pressures on them. The DA, therefore, calls on the Department to ensure that every student, especially those in poorer communities and remote areas, have access to the necessary resources to make a success of their academic year.
It is critical that Minister Nzimande takes proactive steps that no student, no matter their socio-economic circumstances, gets left behind in the bid for virtual tertiary education during the Covid-19 pandemic.