Covid-19: Wits to continue the semester online

The University of the Witwatersrand will switch to remote online teaching and learning from 20 April. This is alongside a range of other contingency and continuity plans, the university said in a statement.

Wits vice chancellor and principal Adam Habib expressed that university staff have been hard at work to ensure students can continue their academics for the year but pleads with students to do their part. “While the faculties will ensure that the requisite support is in place, our students will have to make an extraordinary effort to adapt to remote online learning, particularly over the next few months.”

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Wits academics have spent the past few weeks adapting the academic programme to go online largely through the university’s learning management systems, in developing additional resources for remote learning and in preparing to host these sites in the cloud. Habib acknowledged that this will be a time of change and new experience for all at the university.

“We are acutely aware of the anxiety and uncertainty that online teaching and learning presents for both our colleagues and students. The world as we know it is in flux, and it will take our collective courage, dexterity and commitment to fend off the effects of this pandemic and to adapt to new ways of teaching and learning.”

The statement said the university was aware that their students fall into many different social classes and some enjoy more privileges than others. Deputy vice chancellor Professor Ruksana Osman expressed, “We understand that our emergency remote teaching and learning plan has to take into consideration the different learning environments of our students and their access to learning resources, appropriate devices and data.”

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To address this, the university has been putting in place a number of measures to assist such students. These include a mobile learning devices loan of basic devices and having an agreement with Telkom, MTN, Vodacom and Cell C to zero-rate Wits’ library and learning management sites from 15 April 2020.

Habib concluded, “We will emerge from this crisis, stronger and more resilient than ever. This is a complex challenge that will require multiple responses from all of us. Let us use this time to find each other and to work together towards a common goal for our students, our staff and our common humanity.”

How Wits plans to continue learning online

The university stated that between 10 to 15 per cent of Wits students do not have access to appropriate computing devices, adequate access to data or conducive learning environments.

To this end, the university has put in place the following measures to ensure that the majority of students are able to learn remotely:

• Wits has established a Mobile Computing Bank which will enable students to loan basic mobile learning devices. The devices will be pre-loaded with the required learning resources before being delivered via the South African Post Office to students who absolutely need them.

• The university has finalised an agreement with Telkom, MTN, Vodacom and Cell C to zero-rate Wits’ library and learning management sites from 15 April 2020. The full list of zero-rated sites is available via this link: https://www.wits.ac.za/mywits/zero-rated-data-to-students-and-applicants/

• The university will explore high-intensity immersion classes when it resumes contact teaching for disciplines that may be patient-based, laboratory-based, studio-based or involve creative practices that cannot be undertaken online.

• Options to assist students who do not have access to any device or data are being explored, these include the possibility of using the South African Post Office to deliver paper-based material to our students.

• Students pursuing their master’s or PhD degrees will continue to research from home. A list of the library sites that have been zero-rated has already been shared with all postgraduate students.

The university also stated that they will provide additional support to students once contact teaching resumes, including helping those that struggled to transition to online learning. There is also a possibility that face-to-face lectures might be extended into the September and December vacation breaks and for some cohorts, to extend the academic programme into 2021.

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