The Journey of University Students in the Digital Society during the Closure of Schools at the Peak of Covid-19

Abstract

Schools across the globe were shut down at the peak of the COVID-19 with the reason to contain the spread of the virus and that universities were not exceptional as students walked home without any proper strategic plans towards the educational journey as the future of the pandemic was unknown. Universities around the globe started to embrace the future by moving from real classroom teaching to a more digital classroom where students were taught by lecturers online. It was for that reason this study was conducted to evaluate university students’ journey about the use of Learning Management System, Zoom and Google meet to navigate in the digital classroom during the closure of schools at the peak of COVID-19. The study used both primary and secondary data. A questionnaire was developed and administered to obtain the primary data. However, the study selected 10 public universities in Ghana and engaged 500 students as the research participants. Again, convenience and simple random sampling techniques were used to select universities and students respectively. It was confirmed by students that universities shifted from classroom teaching to virtual teaching and that this confirmation was substantiated by students to reveal that Learning Management System was greatly used to conduct virtual teaching that was followed by Zoom and lastly Google meet. In addition, it was found that some students were not digitally literate and this actuated difficulty to excel in the digital classroom created by the universities. It was recommended that universities should factor basic computing into the programme-based courses so that students could become digitally literate and fully prepared for the future.