University Students' Perceptions of Curriculum Content Delivery During COVID-19 New Normal in South Africa

Abstract

Observation and experience exist among university students during COVID-19 new normal; the quality and the process of academic activities have been compromised. This study, therefore, examines the lacuna on whether the new normal is more productive by ensuring that the intention of the curriculum towards students' content knowledge is met or not. Organisational change theory was used to theorise the study within the transformative paradigm (TP) and participatory Rresearch (PR) lenses as a research design. The study was conducted in one of the universities in South Africa. Ten students were selected using the convenience sampling technique because the students were not fully on campus as of the time of this study. The online interview was adopted to collect data because of social distancing rules across the country. Thematic analysis was used to interpret the data. The findings revealed that the COVID-19 new normal does not affect students’ academic performance negatively even though the quality of content delivery is low. The channels of teaching-learning and the Internet of Things are deduced to be unpleasant for the students with recommendations that there is a need to provide the internet-or-things alongside training and retraining for students and lecturers.