Counting the cost of COVID at UNZA

UNZA's Old Residence, popularly known as the Ruins

UNZA library at a distance

An UNZA Student

                                   

UNZA students at the School of Education's Mature Square

By VICTOR KALALANDA, December 17, 2020

A SINGLE file of students pops up from the gaunt lecture theatre and, as if it were clay, dissolves into the pouring rain, forcing each individual to sprint to the nearest shelter.

In this web of human traffic is 19-year-old Ian Chisambi, against whose background a line of  lousily handwritten graffiti on the wall reads Welcome to the University of Zambia (UNZA).

A prospective civil engineering major, Ian has been studying for a year now at what is arguably Zambia’s most important institution of higher learning.

But Ian’s one year of learning at UNZA so far is just on paper – the reality looks a lot more different and sad – and not only that, but alarming, too.

“Do you think you’re ready?” I ask him.

“For the exam?” Ian grins, asking for clarity.

“Yes.” 

“Hmmmm – on a personal level, like for me, I know I can be ready, but I don’t know about [others].” 

“In terms of preparation, do you think you’ve been equipped as a scientist?” I probe further.

At this stage, the glint of hope in Ian’s eyes fades into that of despair and he says in response, “Ah no – we haven’t had that attention from lecturers and tutors… and the fact that they tried to squeeze one year’s work into like two weeks, I can’t really say I’m equipped.”

Ian’s story mirrors the experiences of thousands of other UNZA students who have been subjected to an apparently poor e-learning system – exacerbated by a conservative and ageing faculty – since the COVID-19 pandemic erupted in December 2019 to disrupt public life.

The university has since conducted two studies to establish the effectiveness of its official online learning platform, Moodle, but management’s reluctance to discuss the studies’ findings with the media suggests clear frustration with the results, which are confirmed by observation and a direct cross section of interviews with individual students, including both academic and non-academic staff.

For example, the university’s director in charge of quality assurance, Dr Jonathan Tambatamba, under whose office the studies were conducted, when asked about the findings, is quick to deny autonomy and gives a flippant excuse when he says:

This is a very sensitive matter. I can’t disclose the results. You need to call the VC (UNZA’s vice-chancellor).

But venerated scientist Habatwa Mweene, who teaches physics, is direct and frank about the challenges of the new mode of learning, which requires the use of computers, videos and the Internet. 

I think we should have proper e-learning studios instead of just telling people to do teaching and they are supplied with nothing and they have to improvise. We got absolutely nothing, only an instruction to do e-teaching. The Moodle system [isn’t] convenient for teaching, reveals Dr Mweene. 

Adaptation to and adoption of emerging e-learning methods and technologies across the university has been at a snailish pace as evidenced by the weak Wi-Fi signal, which also entails that lecturers have to personally foot the bill for Internet data if they decide to use their own gadgets and teach from home.

It had to take a pandemic to expose the structural inadequacies of the university, and until recently, there was little or no learning happening online for many students since the closure of the university in March this year as a result of COVID-19.

This year’s dreaded public health crisis has taken a heavy toll on the university such that actual physical learning for all students, whether doing social or natural sciences, has had to last for just two weeks, which sounds ridiculous having been complemented by poor and ineffective online learning and teaching.

We didn’t learn anything at home. In some of the courses lecturers just uploaded notes without explaining, says a female first year student, who opts for anonymity. 

As students run around to write exams, one is inclined to think – and rightfully so – that students studied to regurgitate information and not to get a thorough understanding that would prepare them effectively for industry.

It is even more worrying that the success of the poorly implemented e-learning systems at UNZA, which are accessed through the university’s official website, has had to depend on a partly ageing and conservative faculty that is not enthusiastic about the possibilities technology has for enhanced teaching methods in the 21st century.

The problem of ageing at UNZA and how it relates to teacher performance in the current dispensation is reflected by the sentiments of UNZA’s communications officer, Mulunda Habeenzu, when he says:

I get a lot of resistance from the older lecturers, too, for example when you send them an email and then they say, ‘Young man, where do you think I’ll take a soft copy? Give it to me in hard copy! I’m old school’.

The negative impact of e-learning on UNZA, as Zambia’s largest institution of higher learning, is seen in the ineffectiveness of e-learning, which is more costly and runs deeper than the university management would have anybody believe.

As the leader in the higher education industry, UNZA management firstly needs to accept that the 21st century is a dynamic period and effectively prioritising and implementing e-learning systems and methods is the fate of the university of the future.

To continue being relevant and producing competent graduates for the competing and diverse needs of today, in the ensuing months and years UNZA must partly focus its resources on setting up e-teaching studios and the necessary and corresponding infrastructures like good Internet connectivity.

It must not end there: the university must find ways of upskilling its faculty, both new and ageing, that the academic adage “publish or perish” does not only relate to research, but also to the contemporary teaching world, which requires that a lecturer is highly receptive to technology in order to make their teaching easier.

For UNZA to be worth its name, it ought to exercise such resilience, and when it does, students who want to study civil engineering like Ian will not have to worry about their competence levels as scientists.

But if not, the university’s 2020 theme, “Resilient academic excellence amidst global challenges”, will soon be illustrative of the common saying that “talk is cheap”.