Adopting WhatsApp to Reduce Transactional Distance During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Mobile devices have penetrated all levels of society worldwide, including what are predominantly considered inaccessible, low-income communities in developing nations. Mobile devices are frequently used for economic, political, and social interactions and even business transactions. In a similar fashion, teachers are slowly adapting to the use of mobile devices as a pedagogical tool in education. The aim of this study was to ascertain how a WhatsApp group, a messaging facility, could be used to enhance group interaction among pre-service teachers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Moore's Transactional Distance theory and Salmon's five-stage model guided this qualitative study. Twelve pre-service teachers, out of a class of thirty-five, were purposely selected to work on a group task using the WhatsApp application during the COVID-19 pandemic. They also participated in a focus group interview. WhatsApp artifacts and focus group interview transcripts were analyzed deductively;the results showed that the WhatsApp intervention helped improve pre-service teachers' engagement and the sharing of content to successfully undertake the group activity virtually. WhatsApp's social nature has proven to be an enabler for keeping people connected despite physical distance: reducing cognitive loneliness resulting from social isolation. It is recommended that teacher educators, academics, and researchers, as well as students working remotely take advantage of the usability of WhatsApp for learning and research purposes.

Investigating Cyber Security Awareness Among Preservice Teachers During the COVID-19 Pandemic

South African institutions of higher education suffered serious disruptions during the COVID-19 pandemic which, resulted in migrating most teaching and learning activities to various online platforms, of which many depended on the open web. This has the potential to expose lecturers and students to cyber security threats and risks. As such cyber security awareness (CSA) becomes important. This study investigated the CSA among preservice teachers pursuing a Bachelor of Education studies in Further Education and Training (FET) at a university in Cape Town, South Africa. The purpose of the study was to gain an insight into CSA among preservice teachers who had been using digital technologies to support learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. An electronic questionnaire was administered to a random sample of 300 preservice teachers. The findings show that preservice teachers were limited in their awareness of cyber security threats and risks likely to affect their use of various digital technologies for remote learning. Furthermore, preservice teachers implemented basic strategies to mitigate basic cyber security threats and attacks. These basic strategies were found not to be sufficient for advanced attacks. The study concluded that lack of proper CSA and knowledge among preservice teachers presented them with challenges in solving threat attacks associated with denial-of-service (DoS), data theft and phishing when using personal digital devices. © 2022, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.