ABSTRACT
Due to the outbreak of COVID-19, the President of South Africa, declared a national state of disaster with immediate travel restrictions and complete closure of universities, effective 18 March 2020. No face-to-face classes were allowed and most of the remaining semester had to be delivered online with, among other methods, online videos. The content for the subject Digital Technology III is perceived by students as difficult to comprehend and they indicated that face-to-face delivery was preferable. It was decided to fill this face-to-face gap with online video tutorials, but at the time of this study, it was found that there were not many relevant videos already available. The lack of relevant videos further reiterates the statement from students of it being perceived as difficult concepts. The facilitator created the content to be relevant to the syllabus and measured student perceptions of the benefits of the content for online learning. An online survey was designed, ethical clearance granted, and after the assignments were due the survey was made available for completion. Of the active students in the subject, 36% completed the survey. Results indicated the perception of these generated online video tutorials as well as the impact they may have on the future, more digitally inclined, demographic. Positive feedback was obtained from the sample. © 2021 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
The spread of COVID-19 during 2020 caused universities across the world to adopt Emergency Remote Teaching. Lecturers and students had to stay home but targets still had to be met and grants secured. The problem for the Central University of Technology, Free State was that being a traditional face-to-face university employing a blended learning approach, many of its lecturers were unprepared to move their delivery online in such a short time. This paper documents the observation of a learning designer during the time of lockdown, between the beginning of April 2020 to end of March 2021. The paper takes an autoethnographic approach, retrospectively and selectively documenting the observations of the author. Five interventions were introduced to prepare lecturers for online delivery including an online asynchronous self-paced course, online synchronous short courses, face-to-face demonstrations using video conferencing software, a WhatsApp group, and short video tutorials. The observations showed that the WhatsApp group and video tutorials uploaded to YouTube provided the best support for lecturers as they created a sense of community, provided demonstrations, and were micro-lessons. © 2021 ACM.