Digitalised curriculum to the rescue of a higher education institution

Abstract

This time of COVID-19 has compelled higher education institution (HEI) academics to embrace a digitalised curriculum in teaching, learning, and research. A digitalised curriculum is a plan for and/or a plan of teaching, learning, and research, driven by specific hardware, software, and theories. HEI leaders of teaching and learning have been unsuccessful over the years in promoting the use of various kinds of learning management systems (LMSs) with the aim of embracing a digitalised curriculum. The unsuccessful promotion of LMSs was caused by the lack of compelling situations that forced digital technology refugees to use the LMSs. In 2020, when COVID-19, which originated in China, started to affect other countries, academics desperately transformed their minds in embracing the digitalised curriculum. They started to attend any workshops on the use of digital technologies through Zoom. The findings of the study reveal that the transformation experiences of these academics were reflections, translation, rotation, enlargement, and reduction. These transformation experiences addressed the tension between a performance curriculum and a competency-based curriculum. This study explored the transformation experiences of academics at an HEI in South Africa. Zoom observations, semi-structured interviews and focus-group discussions were used for data collection. A mixed method and pragmatic paradigm were used to frame this study. The study applied purposive with convenience sampling in selecting twenty participants. This study concludes by recommending the identification of values or ideologies relevant to the enactment of the digitalised curriculum that comes to the rescue of HEIs at this time of COVID-19 and beyond.

Students’ Habits Appear Captured by WhatsApp

“…The devices seemed to naturally connect and work for the participants even when they were not aware of how to learn under the COVID-19 challenges. These are qualities of natural actions to cope within the uncertainty (COVID-19 and lockdown) and 4IR (Mpungose & Khoza, 2020a).…”

“…On the one hand, social habits are formed by the usage of WhatsApp, as noted on the competence-based curriculum (Budden, 2017;Mpungose & Khoza, 2020a;Pather, 2017). The competence-based curriculum is a plan of learning driven by students' experiences, that reflects students' societal needs and achievement of learning outcomes (Khoza, 2017;Kisaka, 2018).…”

Can Teachers’ Identities Come to the Rescue in the Fourth Industrial Revolution?

“…For example, in 2009, when WhatsApp was introduced by Jan Koum and Brian Acton (erstwhile Yahoo employees) for Smartphone communication, teachers saw a teaching and learning resource to be used for educational activities. The two leading SMSs (Facebook, and YouTube) also attracted many teachers when they were introduced (Khoza & Mpungose, 2020 ; Khoza, 2020b ). The SMSs are used as a teaching and learning resource which is defined as any object or person that communicates education (Khoza & Biyela, 2020 ).…”

“…Most of the other types of HEI concluded the 2020 academic year in 2021. This was because they had to train academics/teachers and students on online digital technologies, since most of these teachers had only then to fully use them for the first time (Khoza & Mpungose, 2020 ; Sokhulu, 2020 ). This suggests the importance of introducing the 4IR resources as part of education in order for one’s 4IR needs to be addressed by the 4IR technologies before one faces uncertainty.…”

“…This suggests another level of identity—natural identity. According to Khoza and Mpungose ( 2020 ), natural identity seems to have emerged from the 4IR technologies where humans accept any outcome of their actions, because all their actions and outcomes were created by a perfect Creator. This further suggests that teachers should reflect on their experiences in order to understand their identities before they start the process of education.…”