Abstract
Technology-based platforms in higher education institutions (HEIs), including online learning, require innovative approaches to ensure inclusive and transformative educational spaces for students living with disabilities. Achieving social equality, technology access and inclusion may contribute to ensuring a seamless instructional design for students living with disabilities in HEIs amid and beyond COVID-19. COVID-19 has obliged HEIs to adopt alternatives to learning and teaching, making the use of open distance learning (ODL) amid the pandemic more relevant. This theoretical paper considers the significance of ODL by demonstrating how to achieve technology inclusion for students living with disabilities through collaborative online international learning (COIL). Situated within the collaborative learning theory, this paper offers a disability perspective to learning in HEIs, through an analysis of stipulations in the Strategic Policy Framework on Disability for the Post-School Education and Training System (2018). The findings indicate that the application of COIL for students living with disabilities may transform their learning experiences and unlock new pathways for their development. The paper recommends that COIL may be used as a response to ensuring access and inclusive education provision for students living with disabilities in HEIs.
Highlights
The COVID-19 pandemic necessitated that higher education institutions (HEIs) migrate from conventional face-to-face approaches to exclusively online methods of learning and teaching
The central question that this paper addresses is: How may HEIs achieve technology inclusion for students living with disabilities through collaborative online international learning (COIL) during and beyond COVID-19?
An analysis of stipulations in the afore-mentioned policy may provide guidance to HEIs to achieve technology inclusion for students living with disabilities through collaborative online international learning during and beyond the pandemic
Summary
The COVID-19 pandemic necessitated that HEIs migrate from conventional face-to-face approaches to exclusively online methods of learning and teaching. COIL is considered a learning system that promotes virtual collaboration on a mutually beneficial project between students (and lecturers) from two geographically and culturally distinct areas (Appiah-Kubi & Nichwitz, 2020) This virtual mobility creates a socially varied computer-generated setting for online collaboration where students can enhance and explore their personal abilities as well as develop their intercultural proficiency skills (Rubin, 2015). Appiah-Kubi and Annan (2020) investigated the participation of engineering technology students from Ghana and the University of Deyton, respectively in an 8-week COIL programme, who differed in terms of language, culture and geographical regions. In this comparative study the students from the respective universities recounted that the teamwork was either effective or remarkably effective. Through an implementation of this strategic policy framework, redress and transformation with respect to inclusion of individuals living with disabilities may be enhanced (RSA, 2018)
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