Abstract
Over the past two decades, e-learning has become an increasingly important field of study that has attracted scholarly and policy makers’ attention. Many developing nations have embraced e-learning as a tool to enhance accessilibility and affordability of higher education. During the COVID-19 lockdown period, many universities across the world were forced to embrace online teachning and learning to circumvent lockdowns, social distancing and other public health interventions put in place to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus. Consequently, this study sought to establish students’ experiences with the e-learning mode during the COVID-19 lockdown in Namibia. The paper discusses the results of an online survey of 137 undergraduate students about their experiences using e-learning technologies during the COVID-19-induced university closures. An online survey instrument was created on Google forms and a link distributed to students through WhatsApp class groups. Quantitative data were presented through frequency tables and figures, whilst we adopted thematic content analysis to analyse qualitative data. The results of the survey indicate that mobile devices remained the primary computing device used to access academic information. An analysis of the study results led to the emergence of five themes, viz, e-learning system accessibility, e-learning platform layout, resources to access Internet and network, isolation and home environment that captured student challenges with online classes. This paper argues that e-learning is still faced by a myriad of challenges that need to be addressed if it has to be a success. Furthermore, we advance the argument for mobile learning as a viable option for Africa due to the ubuiquity of mobile devices.
Highlights
Since the outbreak of the coronavirus (COVID-19) in China in December 2019, the pandemic has had an unprecedented disruptive influence on people’s lives across the globe, perhaps the greatest socio-economic disruption since the Second World War (WW11)
The purpose of this paper is to report on the challenges faced by undergraduate students when accessing learning resources at the Namibia University of Science and Technology (NUST) during the COVID-19 lockdown measures
It is worth noting that Namibian circumstances may be different, the foregoing needs to be viewed with a degree of caution
Summary
Since the outbreak of the coronavirus (COVID-19) in China in December 2019, the pandemic has had an unprecedented disruptive influence on people’s lives across the globe, perhaps the greatest socio-economic disruption since the Second World War (WW11). The pandemic has had a detrimental effect on educational systems worldwide, leading to the widespread closure of institutions of learning in almost all the countries in the world. Many institutions of learning have paid significant attention to Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), as they are regarded as influential tools in increasing access, managing knowledge and increasing engagement (Gunga & Ricketts, 2007, Mohammadi, 2015). The purported transformative power of ICTs has found an eager audience in the learning domain, with its proponents arguing that the permeation of ICT in education is an inevitable development (Clegg, Hudson & Steel, 2003). The COVID-19 pandemic has shone the spotlight on the purported benefits of learning technologies, or e-learning. Elearning is defined as the usage of ICTs in the delivery of instruction, information, and learning content (Bhuasiri, Xaymoungkhoun, Zo, Rho & Ciganek (2012)
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