Abstract

PITSO, T.; TJABANE, M.; PILLAY, A.  and  BOJABOTSEHA, T. P.. Post-Covid-19 universities: opportunities and challenges for technology-assisted education. S. Afr. J. High. Educ. [online]. 2024, vol.38, n.3, pp.150-175. ISSN 1753-5913.  http://dx.doi.org/10.20853/38-3-6356.

The study is aimed at better understanding responsiveness of contact universities to technology-assisted education Post-Covid-19 pandemic. The suggestion is that a strong relationship exists between positive technology application in teaching and disciplines acceptance of technology. Without disciplines acceptance of technology, its application in teaching poses a challenge. When compelled, force majeure, to rely on technology to save an academic year, contact universities showed resilience. Students' laptops were hastily organised and synchronous online learning ensued. The application of technology in a particular context and this way is called a factor set 1. Two such factors appear in literature as the first factor set which entails synchronous technology-as-utility factor set 1 (FS-1) and asynchronous technology-as-essence factor set 2 (FS-2). There was, however, a need to develop a framework to better understand how technology is applied within the education context. Furthermore, we employed Peer Conversational Interviews with five teachers with less than five years of teaching experience and those possessing more than fifteen years teaching experience. These data were supplemented with data drawn from exploratory descriptive analysis of literature. These data collection efforts were intended to find out whether contact universities applied technology using FS-1 or FS-2 and implications of such decisions in reimagining contact universities beyond Covid-19 pandemic. Results show a strong relationship between disciplines such as IT and Engineering and the positive application of technology in terms of FS-2. They also show that post-pandemic, students are gradually warming to online teaching offerings. There is a need to provide more support to disciplines that show a lackadaisical attitude towards technology application in their areas.

Keywords : remote learning; technology-assisted education; Covid-19 pandemic; technology-as-utility; technology-as-essence.

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