ISRRT_COVID-19_book

had to endure load-shedding (power interruptions) which impacts negatively on the services
in healthcare, education and the business industry. Each zone in the specific region of the
various provinces in South Africa are scheduled for load shedding at specific times of the day.
As a result of these interruptions, certain students were without electricity and could not
access the internet to engage in teaching and learning activities on the online platform. In
order to overcome this, the online lectures conducted on Microsoft Teams were recorded
whilst engaging with the students who had connectivity and then the link to the online lecture
recording was shared with all students via the learner management system (Blackboard),
WhatsApp and email. This provided students with an opportunity to access the recorded
online lecture sessions at any time and allowed them to go back to the recording if they were
uncertain of a particular concept. Furthermore, internet accessibility and network coverage
also remain a challenge for certain students as some reside in rural areas and have limited
network coverage, resulting in intermittent access to the internet and online classes.
To further compound the issue of connectivity, students could not access the internet to parttake
in online classes and access teaching and learning material due to the lack of an
appropriate computer device. In addition to this, the lack of a computer prevents students
from adequately completing assignments, case reports and engaging in online assessments.
These students either need to borrow a computer from their peers or visit an internet café,
thereby incurring additional cost. Where possible, hard copies of all the teaching and learning
material were posted to those students via the postal service to ensure that they were not
left behind in the higher education (HE) system.
Students who had access to an appropriate computer device (e.g. laptop) and a mobile phone,
were provided with e-copies of teaching and learning content via various platforms such as
WhatsApp, email and Blackboard. All platforms of communication were exhausted to ensure
that all students received the teaching and learning content for successful completion of the
2020 academic year.
Affordability of data was another challenge that had to be solved. To this end, the university
provided all students with a 30 Gigabyte mobile internet data bundle every month, to be used
for academic teaching and learning purposes. In order for students to be recipients of the
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