Education Quality and Offerings Intersection Post Pandemic for Inclusive Development: A Case Study

Introduction

COVID-19 (coronavirus) has dramatically reshaped the way global education is delivered. Millions of students were affected by educational institution closures due to the pandemic. COVID-19 has resulted in the largest online movement in the history of education (El Said, 2021). Face-to-face learning and teaching were suspended to counter the spread of COVID-19 transmission. This was also the case in Namibia, as the outbreak of COVID-19 forced universities in Namibia to move away from face-to-face lectures and examinations to virtual mode. During the 2019 academic year, students were taught face-to-face and in the year 2020 most of the learning, teaching, and assessment undertaking were shifted to online. When it comes to performance, students enrolled in face-to-face mode are more likely to perform significantly better than students enrolled in online classes in terms of the examination average and improvement in post-test lecture questions (Arias et al., 2018, p. 16). Though, Paul and Jefferson (2019, p. 1) persist that there is no significant difference in academic performance between online and face-to-face students, with respect to gender, or with respect to class rank. The move of continuous assessments and final examinations to a virtual form has arguably raised the most critical academic integrity issues among administrators, faculty members, and students (Champagne & Granja, 2021). This is because the online mode of student assessments is likely not to meet government(s) set standards for student attainment (as detecting any cheating would be significantly challenging), in terms of the knowledge and skills students are expected to have attained at different stages of their education (Gamage et al., 2020; Paulo et al., 2009). Although, Spaulding (2009) found that academic dishonesty was the same in online and traditional (contact) classrooms. This infers that in a normal education setup academic cheating by students occurs at the same level, irrespective of the mode (virtual/contact) of education offering.

The COVID-19 pandemic has created the largest disruption of education systems in history, affecting nearly 1.6 billion students in more than 190 countries and all continents (United Nations [UN], 2020). Moreover, closures of universities and other learning spaces have impacted 94 percent of the world’s student population, up to 99 percent in low- and middle-income countries. This indicates that higher education systems of developing countries such as Namibia have been highly affected by the pandemic outbreak compared to developed countries. Nonetheless, the COVID-19 pandemic has also deepened the impact of disparities in developed countries. For example, McKie (2020) revealed that almost three-quarters of English students experienced a lack of access to quiet spaces to study and more than half said they were unable to access digital course materials following the switch to online learning. Moreover, due to ‘digital poverty’ there was inability by some students in England to access higher education from home, which likely resulted in such students being left behind in their education. According to Alsoud and Harasis (2021), during the national lockdown due to COVID-19, university students in Jordan were suffering from several challenges, mainly the feel of anxieties, not having a device to attend the online classes, not having a separate room to study at home, and internet connectivity issues. Similarly, at public universities in the United States of America (USA), there are technological and other barriers that make it harder for students of colour to stay engaged in virtual classrooms to access and benefit from higher education (Department of Education of the United States of America [DEUSA], 2021). In addition, many institutions of higher education in the USA reported a sharp drop-off in enrollment in 2020 of students graduating from high-poverty high schools compared to pre-pandemic numbers. In the same vein, the current study analyse the relationship between student academic performance and mode of study before/after COVID-19 outbreak in Namibia. Furthermore, the study determines if regional internet connectivity is associated with student academic performance after COVID-19 outbreak when mode of learning and teaching was moved to online.