LECTURERS EXCEL UNDER E-LEARNING ENVIRONMENT

Onke Gqokonqana

Dr Olutoyin Olaitan

Alecturer’s approach to remote learning amidst Covid-19 restrictions was met with rave reviews by fellow academics after he shared his experience in interacting with students using digital and social media.

Accounting lecturer Onke Gqokonqana’s recent presentation at the Buffalo City Campus leg of the Grassroots competition, titled “Effective class outside the classroom”, had the audience transfixed as he narrated his use of Microsoft Teams as a tool to impart knowledge and information to his class.

“On Microsoft Teams I preload the content of our syllabus and ask my students to go through it before having a live teaching and learning session. By doing this I’m directing my students to familiarize themselves with what content they have to know before class,” said Gqokonqana.

When the class commences, he uses his touchscreen laptop to display the content he’s engaging on to his students, whilst also being able to, in instances of an accounting problem, solve problems step-by-step in real time using a stylus pen.

Because of a plethora of challenges students face in accessing the live sessions, Gqokonqana records his lessons and then compresses them to a smaller size using an open-source video transcoding application called ‘HandBrake’. From then on he sends the compressed video to a Whatsapp group he’s created for the sharing of these lessons.

His dynamism and industry earned him first prize at the Grassroots competition. “Mr Gqokonqana won because he ticked all the boxes the criteria – accessibility to content; interaction with students; interaction amongst students; assessment of the effectiveness of the platforms and facilitation of synchronous lessons,” said WSU e-Access and Digital Library Manager Lungile Mdanyana.

The Centre for Teaching and Learning Development (CLTD), to which Mdanyana belongs, continues to champion a number of interventions aimed at advancing remote learning at the university.

Numerous workshops, one-on-one consultations with lecturers and student training – all virtual, have been held and conducted with these stakeholders about the WiSeUp platform, which is the institution’s primary e-Learning tool.

“We’ve also trained lecturers on other emerging technologies such as padlet, flipgrid, EdPuzzle, Handbrake and Powerpoint Voiceovers. These are the tools that lecturers integrated within WiSeUp to make learning interactive and student-centred,” said Mdanyana.

Hot on the heels of Gqokonqana as runner-up was applied informatics and mathematical sciences department lecturer Dr Olutoyin Olaitan, who used three social and digital media platforms as her preferred method of virtual teaching.

Olaitan used WiSeUp’s ‘Blackboard’ platform to upload learning materials, student notes, lecture notes, videos from YouTube for providing further clarity course content, as well as for assessments and practice tests.

“I also used Whatsapp because many of my students didn’t receive data on time. Others had data but lived in remote areas with very poor connectivity and we thus formed class groups on WhatsApp. Course content, self- assessments and explanation of concepts were done through this platform. The chat element gave reserved students the anonymity and confidence to participate fully in the classes. The WhatsApp platform also played a huge role in our communications as a huge percentage of the class had access to this platform,” she said.

The third pillar upon which Dr Olaitan’s remote learning strategy rested was Microsoft Teams, through which she set up live classes and was able to virtually interact directly with her students in real time.

By Thando Cezula