University students' mental health and wellbeing has been a global public health issue of increasing concern in recent years, with a growing body of empirical evidence suggesting university students are a 'very high-risk population' for mental disorders and psychological distress. Pre-existing mental health challenges among university students…

The COVID-19 pandemic that began in March 2020 gave rise to a number of challenges for first-year experience activities at universities globally. One of the key challenges was the process of onboarding first-year students through an orientation programme that could not take place face-to-face as per the norm. In 2021, the first-year orientation at…

Online learning has become a significant trend in education due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Online educators, course designers and institutions need to understand the importance of social presence in the dynamics of a community of inquiry and its association with teaching and cognitive presence. This study examined whether social presence mediated…

In South Africa, many students enter university without the skills required for success in higher education. Extended curriculum programmes (ECP) were developed to provide students who showed potential but were underprepared with the necessary foundations to achieve success in higher education. Student support services are essential to student…

Purpose: In this paper, researcher describe how the educational innovations and creativity affects the efficiency and performance of the Universities in South Africa in their bid to cope with challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic since the beginning of the 2020 academic year. Method: The researcher used the cross-sectional research design. The…

As the Sars-CoV2 pandemic continues to grow, researchers around the world are urgently seeking new treatments to prevent infection, cure those infected, or lessen the severity of the disease. Although there are several recently approved vaccines, clinical trials are underway to "re-use" drugs normally indicated for other diseases. This…

Purpose: This study aims to help scholars comprehend the major research themes on sustainable development goals (SDGs) in higher education which researchers from various fields have explored and to propose several potential future research directions of the least researched SDG in higher education to support scholars in making up the gap in the…

The pressure towards digital education is felt everywhere including in places with extreme digital divides. Resource-constrained educational environments are particularly threatened by datification manifest in the dominant business models of surveillance capitalism as there is less room in such contexts to refuse the 'free' offerings from big tech…

This paper explores the thesis of de-globalisation in relation to international education. Through interrogating accounts of international school leadership during the COVID-19 crisis, the tension between international expectations and localised realities is charted, with four central tenets of internationalism undermined by the pandemic…

Purpose: The objective of the study was to explore which COVID-19 teaching and learning methods, that enhanced accounting students' learning experience, should be applied at a residential university after the pandemic. Design/methodology/approach: A qualitative exploratory approach within an interpretive paradigm was applied. A total of 15…

Pragmatism is an important resource that has helped higher education institutions (HEIs) in Lesotho and South Africa to complete the 2020 academic year even when they were affected by COVID-19. Pragmatism is a philosophy of human actions combined with experiences in order to produce outcomes or consequences, where the reality is about what works…

The abrupt transition in teaching and learning styles and the challenges faced by online tutors as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic are increasing areas of research. At the University of the Western Cape (UWC) preparing for the transition had an impact on tutors who had to make major adjustments to their tutoring. The research presented here…

The discourse around online summative assessment has become one of the major issues in open distance learning (ODL) worldwide. There is a lack of major research in online summative assessment in environmental education (EE) module for the bachelor of education (B.Ed.) students in ODL. The purpose of this study was to explore online summative…

This article was motivated by the need to academically frame and share the response of the North-West University (NWU) to the perceived increase of academic dishonesty during COVID-19. Within the ambit of the online (hybrid) teaching and learning approach that became dominant during the COVID-19 pandemic, the NWU established a Community of…

Several studies have focused attention on the crisis of the COVID19 pandemic and the impact on the traditional face-to-face teaching and learning activities across the globe. There is, however, little research regarding the platformisation of education with the aid of the learning management systems (LMSs) in the contexts of South African…