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THE University of South Africa (Unisa) needs almost no introduction as the biggest university on the continent, and a pioneer of distance and online education.
What many may not know is that, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Unisa did things in a more traditional way when it came to examinations. Like most universities Unisa required that students physically visit a dedicated exam centre to sit down and write exams with pen and paper.
How this changed when the pandemic hit is an interesting look at how technology in education rapidly evolved over the last few years.
As COVID-19 took root in South Africa in 2020, many students began to wonder what would become of their final assessments for the May / June exam period. Unisa finally made the change in April 2020 following governmental changes to lockdown.
“The extension of the national lockdown declared by President Cyril Ramaphosa has meant that Unisa has had to make some far-reaching decisions regarding the May/June 2020 examination period. The May/June 2020 examination period will continue, but no venue-based examinations will be written during this time. The university will, instead, make use of alternative assessment formats for this examination period,” the university announced at the time.
Announcing such a big change to the way exams were taken, just a month before they were set to start, caused quite the problem for the university and its students. Those who preferred not to partake in the new online exams – either because of lack of access to a computer or internet issues – could instead defer to the October / November 2020 exam period with no penalty to their academic record, or additional monetary costs.
Several problems crept up for this maiden voyage, mostly due to technical issues and load problems as servers were strained, but thousands of students successfully completed their papers and continued with their education as planned. After some delay, results from these exams were published too, completing the first attempt at this system by Unisa.
In September 2020 the continuation of online exams were confirmed by Unisa, which stated that all future examinations would be held in this way. This has continued in the intervening years with the Unisa student portal MyUnisa now featuring a MyExams dedicated section for these assessments.
All of this would have been impossible without advances in personal computing and home internet. Should a pandemic like COVID-19 have appeared even a decade ago it’s unlikely that such a successful endeavour could have been carried out by Unisa. With this success the university even sought to move other in person activities online, such as student orientation.
With these changes Unisa has become even more ingrained in the fundamentals of online and distance education.
Ask any past Unisa student, or any university graduate in general, where the real work is done, the likely answer is on a notebook or more recently a Chromebook. This form factor of portable devices with a screen, physical keyboard and trackpad has proven for decades to be the de facto single answer from taking those first notes in class all the way to writing that final exam.
Notebooks and Chromebooks have become even more uniquely suited to the online exam environment with Unisa and many other institutions requiring that a webcam be turned on and running proctoring software. This software uses a device’s camera and sometimes microphone to make sure that the right student is writing the right exam with no outside help.
Even the South African government recognises the need for these devices as the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) runs the Digital Learning Device Project to assign a portion of student funding for a notebook intended for school use.
While there’s many options for notebooks and Chromebooks, a great option all students should consider is ASUS. The well-known manufacturer has a keen focus on devices for students with its recent Own Tomorrow campaign shining a focus on everything about university life, from a Varsity survival guide, to where to get your device.
The campaign is also great for those who need a new device for school, but may not know what specific components, like a CPU, GPU, and screen technology entail.
Those who already have a grasp of these concepts can shop the ASUS South Africa store right now with a dedicated student subsection available here.
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