Following COVID-19: national discussions to move online

COVID-19 poses a challenge to the higher education landscape at a magnitude similar to the emergence of technology-supported online instruction. It is no coincidence that the solution to this challenge lies—in part, at least—in higher education’s commitment to foster online teaching and learning. In a very short period, all universities in South Africa are required to move away from traditional teaching methods to online teaching, in an attempt to see the 2020 cohort through the current academic year.

But many academics and students are faced with problems to make a complete digital move due to several reasons, including the cost of data, the technical unfamiliarity of interacting with virtual content, and socio-economic issues. The question had to be asked: are we ready to teach entrepreneurship online?

In response to this question, Entrepreneurship Development in Higher Education (EDHE)—a body under Universities South Africa (USAf)’s Community of Practice (CoP) Entrepreneurship Development in Academia—hosted a nation-wide Zoom workshop on Tuesday, 14 April 2020 to discuss the theme “Sharing practice to move online with entrepreneurship teaching methods and student experiences”.

The discussion was joined by one hundred and eight participants representing seventeen South African universities. Participants had the opportunity to share experiences and brainstorm the new socioeconomic realities of our current situation. Dr Thea van der Westhuizen, the national convener for this CoP, said that the online workshop was a first-of-a-kind, initiated and hosted to a large audience of entrepreneurship academia and university operational staff from different incubators, accelerators and entrepreneurship service-desks.

From the University of KwaZulu-Natal, the Deputy Vice Chancellor for Teaching and Learning, Professor Sandile Songca, and the Deputy Vice Chancellor of Research, Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Professor Deresh Ramjugernath, discussed the “bigger picture” of re-mobilising an institute to online platforms. Professors Songca and Ramjugernath outlined three possible scenarios, following COVID-19 which university staff and students may prepare themselves for:

1.         that students will be able to return to normality (contact on campus) after the lockdown period of 35 days (that is +- 30 April 2020);

2.         that students are not able to return on the 30th of April (or any time before 4 May 2020),  and that we may be looking at June/July/August to resume contact lectures; and

3.         that students may only be able to return to campus after 3 August 2020, or not at all in 2020.

Professor Ramjugernath said that going online is a must, and that sustainability of universities nation-wide depended on making this move. He highlighted poor internet reception and students not being as techno-savvy as we would like them to be as key barriers, both in South Africa and in many other countries throughout the world.

Students from rural areas, especially those who come from a Quintile 1-3 school background, have difficulties in accessing the internet, and even struggle to access 2G networks. He further highlighted that many students come from socio-economic backgrounds which are not conducive to learning from home; many do not even have electricity.

He proposed that a) an immediate investigation should be launched to determine cellular coverage throughout South Africa; b) students’ access to devices must be surveyed, and c) we survey the percentage of students we will be able to cater for when a tertiary institute moves fully online. He believes that institutes like UKZN have the technology to move fully online, but that student internet access and municipal infrastructure propose bigger barriers. Professor Ramjugernath concluded that the only way to salvage the 2020 academic year—should scenario two or three come into action—is by moving online.

Professor Shepherd Dhilwayo, Campus Coordinator for Doornfontein in the Department of Business Management, University of Johannesburg, gave a perspective from a campus-coordinator viewpoint on coordinating a cluster of lecturers to teach entrepreneurship online. Prof Dhilwayo’s approach is to embed entrepreneurship elements into a wide variety of non-business service subjects, such as engineering and health sciences. He pointed out that following COVID-19, the Department of Business Management managed to continue with teaching and learning processes through online methods.

An initial concern was whether modules could immediately be transitioned from a blended learning to a fully online approach, but it seems that in this case lecturers had not faced serious barriers in placing content online. He concluded that there might be need to revise the practical component of entrepreneurship modules where students are required to interact socially, to a more theoretical and hypothetical scenario-based method of teaching delivery.

For Professor Richard Shambare of the University of the Western Cape there were various barriers and opportunities to consider for tertiary undergraduate teaching of entrepreneurship and student experiences thereof. He believes that now is a good time for entrepreneurship teachers to re-invent their curriculum to embrace a future technology-orientated world. Such a curriculum would provide business solutions to socio-economic problems and contribute to value creation of current social problems following COVID-19. For example, creating medical technologies to alleviate symptoms of the coronavirus.

He sees the new social order as a good opportunity for entrepreneurship students to re-develop their entrepreneurial mindset and sharply assess how they can creatively innovate new business opportunities, especially online business. Professor Shambare emphasised that entrepreneurship educators can no longer pretend to be “all-wise-and-all-knowing”, but should co-create knowledge with various scholars from different disciplines and institutes, especially working closer with the private sector and practitioners.

Disruption of the current status quo needs disruptive thinking to solve new needs, making the marketplace a “living laboratory” with unknown bounds of opportunity and barriers. The challenge for entrepreneurship lecturers now is about identifying the needs, determining how these needs may be quantified, and what value it can add to South Africa’s socio-economic development. Yesterday’s competitive business advantage is not applicable today. 

A shared concern from all participants was on best practice to structure assessment of the new entrepreneurship teaching and learning methods, to ensure robustness and quality assurance.

Dr Thea van der Westhuizen concluded the discussion by proposing that tertiary institutes, the private sector and various levels of government need to strengthen their systemic integration to share resources and expertise. Re-building communities will require a strong integrative approach where different sectors and industries strongly support one another.

The discussion can be viewed at: https://youtu.be/XXbL0-twsIM