ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic has affected hundreds of million lives and taken over four million lives to date. As a result, governments and policymakers see the need for emergency action to reduce the spread of the virus. In an attempt to contain the virus, governments and policymakers worldwide introduced a different range of protection measures and interventions to change their citizen's behaviours, primarily through social distancing, interprovince lockdown, stay at home strategies, and quarantines. The different lockdown measures have created unique and challenging conditions with no documented equivalent in the education sector. A significant effect was that many Higher Education institutions worldwide were not ready to switch to online teaching and learning when the governments announced the sudden lockdown. This study discusses the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on South Africa Higher Education Institutions, focusing on the historically disadvantaged universities. The study went further to evaluate the readiness of lecturers from selected disadvantaged universities to adopting online teaching and learning by applying the Technology Readiness-Acceptance Model (TRAM). Quantitative data was collected through an online questionnaire. Results show that the higher the average of optimism and innovativeness among the respondents' point towards the readiness of adopting technology. On the other hand, higher the average insecurity and discomfort show the uneasiness of adopting technologies by the respondents.
ABSTRACT
As of 27 December 2021, SARS-CoV-2 has infected over 278 million persons and caused 5.3 million deaths. Since the outbreak of COVID-19, different methods, from medical to artificial intelligence, have been used for its detection, diagnosis, and surveillance. Meanwhile, fast and efficient point-of-care (POC) testing and self-testing kits have become necessary in the fight against COVID-19 and to assist healthcare personnel and governments curb the spread of the virus. This paper presents a review of the various types of COVID-19 detection methods, diagnostic technologies, and surveillance approaches that have been used or proposed. The review provided in this article should be beneficial to researchers in this field and health policymakers at large.
ABSTRACT
The current Covid-19 pandemic has led to the need for more profound research on the digital state in developing nations. As societies aim to adopt technologies, there are critical challenges at hand. The digital divide issue has been luring in modern-day society, particularly the various challenges societies face from harnessing the full benefits that Information and Communication Technology can deliver. Unquestionably, an increase in access to enabling technologies has great potential to close the disparities between social groups. This paper presents the results of a systematic review based on the PRISMA protocol that aims to investigate the digital transforming challenges encountered in rural communities within South Africa. The systematic review was conducted using a comprehensive selection of scientific databases as reference sources, allowing access to several related studies. Inclusion and exclusion criteria were defined and applied to each retrieved article to choose those that satisfy the current study. From 233 retrieved articles, 32 were included. To further understand the main causes of these challenges, three major problems were identified: socio-economic, technology, and politics. Each of the 32 articles was critically studied to understand their findings before grouping them under any of the identified categories. Based on our findings, we highlighted other key challenges and recommendations to enhance ICT adoption and integration into rural areas in South Africa.
ABSTRACT
The entire globe is battling the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, which has caused a downward spiral in many nations' economies, particularly in the higher education contexts. A growing number of universities have either postponed or cancelled academic activities. A few universities have intensified measures to prevent face-to-face interactions, intending to protect staff members and students from this highly contagious disease. This study investigates the COVID-19 impact on the higher education sector in Nigeria. Interview sessions involving seven lecturers across five universities in three geographical locations of Nigeria were conducted. The interview data were gathered using digital applications, such as Zoom cloud meetings and Skype, transcribed into a textual format, and further analysed. Six themes with corresponding sub-themes emerged from the study. In the final analysis, results revealed that COVID-19 negatively impacted several universities. This study presents opportunities for responding issues, problems and trends that are currently arising and will arise in the future due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in the Nigerian higher education system.