The Influence of COVID-19 on Students’ Learning: Access and Participation in Higher Education in Southern Africa,

Abstract

Recent experiences of institutions in COVID 19 have heightened the need for research on its impact on higher education institutions globally. This article's authors are from higher learning institutions in South Africa, Zambia, and Botswana. Their institutions used a blended mode of learning before COVID 19. The majority of their students used the traditional part of blended learning, depending on the print, postal service, and face-to-face. These students' access and participation in learning during COVID 19 were negatively affected. Using Digital Equity as a framework, this paper explores the influence of COVID 19 on students' access and participation in online learning. Central to this paper is the assumption that there seem to be significant disparities in access and participation in high-quality technologies and severe educational inequities. This paper argues that digital inequality impacts student's access and participation in online teaching and learning. This impact calls for Civic Awareness in digital literacy among the citizenry if the gap between the rural and urban, the have and have not digital immigrants, and digital natives are to be bridged.