Student perceptions of emergency remote teaching and learning at a South African university

Abstract

Towards the end of 2019, China reported a case of unknown pneumonia to the World Health Organization (WHO), and in response, on the 11th of March 2020, they classified COVID-19 a pandemic, prohibiting the movement of people and goods worldwide. As a solution to the social distancing mandate, teaching and learning went online when South African Universities (SAUs) were required by law to physically close their campuses. Currently, published academic literature referred to this learning transformation as emergency remote teaching and learning (ERT/L). The sudden, unplanned educational change disrupted and impacted the way lecturer’s lectured and interacted with their students within a traditional classroom environment. For this reason, the online shift created a research opportunity to ask the following research question: What are university students’ perceptions of ERT/L at a South African University? Guided by the TPACK perspective, students positively perceived the overall experience, drawing on both the advantages and disadvantages.