The Adoption of E-learning by Students in Zimbabwean Universities in the Wake of COVID-19

Abstract

COVID-19 effects have been felt in the education sector worldwide where schools, colleges, and universities were closed as a way to reduce the spread of the deadly pandemic and loss of lives. The Ministry of Higher and Tertiary Education. advocate that no child should be left behind during the COVID-19 era, therefore gave a directive for universities to use other alternative means of teaching and learning to continuously provide teaching and learning to students during the series of lockdown. An efficient eLearning system in universities is very important as an alternative to faceto-face teaching and learning in this COVID-19 era to have continuity in teaching and learning during the induced lockdowns. Success in online learning can be achieved by understanding the level of readiness of online learning environments. The main objective of the study was to evaluate the adoption of online learning by students in Zimbabwean universities. A descriptive online survey employing questionnaires to collect data on the adoption of eLearning by Zimbabwean universities students was used. Results indicated various eLearning platforms have been introduced in Zimbabwean universities though there is a need for eLearning infrastructure to be availed, students to be trained or students to effectively adopt the eLearning.

Education Innovations during COVID-19 Pandemic: “A Case of Zimbabwe and South Africa Universities”

“…Application of concepts and theory was highly demanded, and past exams papers could not match the new demands. In Zimbabwe online examination were not successful because of the following reasons; non-availability of data (students and lecturers), poor internet connectivity, lack of ICT support and lack of personal electronic gadget [29].…”

“…Despite efforts by South African universities to run online examinations, literature showed that they were difficult to manage from perspective of student cheating, lack of technological skills by students to upload their answer sheets and lack of support from ICT department [25]. In Zimbabwe, online examination online was at larger extent a failure because of data cost and connectivity [29]. Generally, managing and running examinations online caused a lot of challenges and provided learning curves for most the universities.…”