COVID-19 and the Digital Transformation of Education: What Are We Learning on 4IR in South Africa?

TLDR

COVID‑19 lockdown halted learning worldwide, and South Africa’s limited higher‑education capacity highlighted the need to evaluate technology’s role in expanding access. The study aimed to evaluate how the COVID‑19 pandemic motivated digital transformation in South Africa’s education sector. The authors tracked the adoption rate of 4IR tools across South African institutions during lockdown using secondary data. During lockdown, 4IR tools were deployed across all education levels, revealing pockets of excellence that could expand access through remote learning.

Abstract

The study sought to assess the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic in motivating digital transformation in the education sector in South Africa. The study was premised on the fact that learning in South Africa and the rest of the world came to a standstill due to the lockdown necessitated by COVID-19. To assess the impact, the study tracked the rate at which the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) tools were used by various institutions during the COVID-19 lockdown. Data were obtained from secondary sources. The findings are that, in South Africa, during the lockdown, a variety of 4IR tools were unleashed from primary education to higher and tertiary education where educational activities switched to remote (online) learning. These observations reflect that South Africa generally has some pockets of excellence to drive the education sector into the 4IR, which has the potential to increase access. Access to education, particularly at a higher education level, has always been a challenge due to a limited number of spaces available. Much as this pandemic has brought with it massive human suffering across the globe, it has presented an opportunity to assess successes and failures of deployed technologies, costs associated with them, and scaling these technologies to improve access.