ISRRT_COVID-19_book

all the students. Also, lectures had to be available around the clock to respond to students
who manage to interact just before or after midnight. A fair approach was to be appreciative
of students’ contributions, regardless of the time of submission and the quality. Flexibility
with submission dates and submission formats was also essential, not to discriminate against
those with less ideal circumstances.
Unfortunately, we also experienced how students ‘disappeared’ off the courses and this
required greater vigilance and monitoring on the part of the tutors to ensure that students
were safe. Several students did not respond to messages, did not return calls, and as such,
without an obvious reason, were also left behind with their teaching and learning. In line with
the lockdown arrangements, the university allowed groups of students to return to campus.
This was a great help to assist those students who were left behind by offering additional
teaching, learning, and assessment opportunities.
Apart from teaching, all assessment was also conducted through online means using the
university intranet. The intranet uses an online system called CANVAS. CANVAS facilities
allowed the conduct of timed assessments online. While these were novel to set up and run,
the opportunity to sit assessment online resulted in cases where the academic integrity of a
small number of students was called into question; disappointingly resulting in academic
misconduct referrals and resultant penalties for collusion and cheating.
Due to interruptions in internet connection, load shedding, and limited access to electricity,
students reported that they are unable to submit the assessment activities on time, or within
the given time limit. As such more flexibility in submission had to be added. This aspect
brought several challenges to the fore, such as the integrity of the assessment. We
established that students were copying. Although innovative - we learned that some students
shared screenshots of their responses with their peers via WhatsApp. While we should
perhaps applaud the students for their innovation, the ethical principles in the assessment
are compromised. Additionally, there was an increase in the similarities reported via the safeassign
tool on the online platform, pointing to students, not paraphrasing, and perhaps copy
text from the internet.
We also faced new issues in terms of access to the required technology; the most prominent
being poor internet connection which affected lecturers and students alike. It was also not a
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