Ms. N. Ceza, CLTD Butterworth Campus Manager: Foreword The rapid technological changes that have been characterizing the 21st century are affecting every area of human life. These changes which were greatly influenced by the Fourth Industrial (4IR) revolution have now been catapulted by the COVID-19 Lockdown and its demands. Educational sphere has been extremely impacted as all Teaching and Learning has to be done online. The universities, globally, had to migrate from face-to-face engagement

more »

... online interaction without any planned preparation. In South Africa the online teaching and learning had to be done by universities regardless of their background as well as the feasibility of the new engagement. Few weeks before the Lockdown the South African society had been classified as the most unequal in the world based on research study termed Inequality trends in South Africa that was conducted by Statistics SA in 2019. In this research, the findings that were based on a 2009-2017 study about the inequality in households with internet access were as follows: Black African (4.1%), Coloured (15.1%), Indian /Asian (32.1%) and Whites (54.9%). The findings about households with access to internet using mobile device between 2011-2017 were as follows: Black Africans 54.3%, Coloureds (57.0%, Indians/Asians (70.7%) and Whites (78.1%). In these households there are higher education students some of which belong to our institution. Walter Sisulu University (WSU) has a majority of students who are identified as Black African and thus are on a lower scale of household internet access. COVID-19 Lockdown ushered in online education against the backdrop of these disparities and lecturers and students had to do their best to jump into the bandwagon. Walter Sisulu University (WSU) whose vision is to be a leading university that is focusing on innovative educational, research and community partnering programmes has amongst many Learning Management Systems been using Blackboard, termed WiSeUp, with the aim of providing a technologic [...]