Observation and experience exist among university students during COVID-19 new normal; the quality and the process of academic activities have been compromised. This study, therefore, examines the lacuna on whether the new normal is more productive by ensuring that the intention of the curriculum towards students' content knowledge is met or not. Organisational change theory was used to theorise the study within the transformative paradigm (TP) and participatory Rresearch (PR) lenses as a research design. The study was conducted in one of the universities in South Africa. Ten students were selected using the convenience sampling technique because the students were not fully on campus as of the time of this study. The online interview was adopted to collect data because of social distancing rules across the country. Thematic analysis was used to interpret the data. The findings revealed that the COVID-19 new normal does not affect students’ academic performance negatively even though the quality of content delivery is low. The channels of teaching-learning and the Internet of Things are deduced to be unpleasant for the students with recommendations that there is a need to provide the internet-or-things alongside training and retraining for students and lecturers.
This study aims at reconstructing an online classroom community project as an alternative to physical collaborative teaching-learning process by identifying the challenges militating against the implementation of an online classroom community project and the possible solutions to mitigate the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Ubuntu was used to theorise the study within the Transformative Paradigm (TP) and Participatory Research (PR) lens as a research design. Ten participants were selected among 810 first-year students who were twice given online community project assessments during the COVID-19 lockdown. The participants were selected using convenient sampling technique because, as at the time of the study, the they are under level 3 lockdown. Thematic analysis was adopted to serve the current research objectives. The study found out some challenges such as: students struggle to locate group members and unstable internet access and electricity shortage mitigate their learning. The study also revealed that tolerance among group members and consistent utilisation of online community project are the possible ways to implement online classroom community project in University classrooms more effectively.
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