TSIBA Education Status Report during COVID-19 Lockdown

Delivering an academic programme amidst Covid-19 lockdown is another milestone in TSIBA’s journey of resilience and purpose!

No sooner had we emerged from the tumultuous, yet exciting migration from Mupine to TSIBA House and then we were subjected to lockdown! 

We are 6+ weeks into lockdown and it is important to assess how TSIBA fared during this time so that we can build on our successes and learn from our failures. This report provides insights to:  

• How TSIBA Business School is faring under lockdown  

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• How effectively we have delivered online learning 

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• Some of the challenges that the Business School is facing, and  

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• Opportunities that TSIBA can leverage for greater impact in a post Covid-19 world.

In the interests of transparency, authenticity and engagement, the report will share our wins, lay bare our challenges and highlight potential opportunities that may emerge.  The content is for introspection and to increase our capacity and resilience through critical thinking, dialogue, robust debate and implementation. This report also serves an overlapping objective of informing our broader stakeholders and donors who hold us in spirit and through social investment. 

1. OUR WINS

1. Good Citizenship and Adherence to Health Protocols

The key objectives of social distancing and the lockdown, are to ensure social empathy and health through limiting local virus transmissions. One of the major concerns, when the hard national lockdown was imposed, was around adherence.  The lockdown highlighted the stark socio-economic inequalities in our society and the difficulties in many informal settlements to adhere to social distancing and sanitisation protocols.  

To date, none of the TSIBA staff nor students are infected by the virus.  Our assessment is that despite difficult circumstances, staff and students are well-aware of the health protocols and are practising good citizenship to ensure compliance in spite of challenging domestic circumstances.

1.2 Emotional Wellness and Social Support  

The first priority after the national lockdown was to allay the fears and anxieties of staff and students facing the uncertainty of a lockdown, and how it could impact teaching and learning, student financial grants and staff salaries.  These concerns were addressed in the following ways: 

• TSIBA endeavoured to honour all payment of permanent and independent contractors as per their  contracts;

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• Students continued to receive their monthly stipends and scholarship grants;

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• Regular communication via bi-weekly emails complemented by outreach efforts on social media platforms were activated;

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• Opportunities were availed for staff and students to engage with change management coaches or counsellors where the needs arose;

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• To lighten the economic burden, sliding-scale tuition fees for students in families with an annual household income of less than R 350 000 were waived completely. In addition, 2020 fees paid to date will be refunded;

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• Chromebook learning devices were issued at no fee to all BBA-1 students, with the provision that no fee is payable on return to campus if students score a 60% total aggregate in the 1st-semester exams. Students who have already paid for Chromebooks will be refunded. 

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• Since the Higher Certificate in Business Administration (HCBA) is not accommodated on the digital teaching platform, Curriculum Handbooks and Study Guides will be printed and made available to them.  

1.3 Successful Migration to Online Learning with Academic Support

While not without significant challenges, it was with speed and agility that TSIBA academics pivoted from an entrenched classroom pedagogy towards online teaching and learning.  Not only did the institution remain true to the purpose of showing what’s possible when business education invests in humans, but it planned to do this within an uncertain social context and in a new, unfamiliar digital format.

Within two weeks of lockdown and after lengthy and constructive debates, TSIBA academics achieved the significant milestone of presenting its first online teaching session. This occurred amidst constraints of time and resources with the primary goal to ensure that the Bachelor of Business Administration degree proceeded.  Preparations included optimising Google Classroom as a learning content repository site and using ZOOM as a teaching delivery tool.  ZOOM functionality orientation sessions were hosted for staff and students, and a budget was incorporated for ongoing training. 

Up to the commencement of the lockdown, Chromebook learning devices were issued to most of the BBA students. During the lockdown, TSIBA undertook an intricate logistical exercise to distribute data bundles to students across the Cape Metropole to enable access to our learning sites.

Teaching and learning are well supported by academic faculty, academic administration, an Academic Support Coordinator, the Student Wellbeing Office, as well as the Student Representative Council.  Regular meetings are held to monitor and evaluate learning challenges, discuss remediation measures, assessments, as well as adjustments to the Academic Calendar.  

Ongoing discussions intra-organisation and with students will see greater improvements in the online teaching and learning methodologies. 

1.4 Donor Support during lockdown

Efforts, globally, to manage the Covid-19 pandemic have shown remarkable collaboration between nations and between private and public health sectors. These relationships highlight the integral connection of all humanity and in particular, that humanist values of empathy, collaboration and synergy will ensure our sustainability.  Hence it is with acknowledgement of these ‘values-in-action’ that TSIBA pays tribute to its many supporters who decisively stepped in to assist with unplanned for Covid-19 expenses. These include The Mapula Trust, The Frank Jackson Foundation, The Philanthropy Initiative with Employees of Allan Gray NPC, Futuregrowth Asset Management, The 476 Charitable Trust, and an international Foundation who wishes to remain anonymous, who at short notice mobilised significant financial resources to enable online teaching and learning. Further generous contributions were received through the TSIBA Chairperson’s Fund.

1.5 Growing a Culture of ‘Exceptionalism.’

Fear, emotional fragility and depression are common emotional responses to uncertainty and have a pervasive downside impact on personal and professional wellbeing. 

TSIBA staff have shown resilience and have risen ably to the challenge of holding the integrity of the academic programme, despite uncertain and complex challenges. 

Albeit that student online attendance is not yet at ideal levels, primarily due to dire social living conditions that many students face, staff preparation and student participation through engaging with learning material are constantly improving. Over time we envisage a return to learning for all TSIBA students registered in this academic year.

2. OUR CHALLENGES

2.1 Recalibrating our Teaching Epistemology during Covid-19

The writer Alvin Toffler in Future Shock (1970) once wrote, ‘The illiterate of the 21st Century will not be those who cannot read or write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn’. 

Unlearning deeply embedded mental paradigms and relearning new ways of teaching present major challenges for educators around the world. The default option is to pursue conventional ways to deliver the current curriculum;  a curriculum which for all intents and purposes might be largely obsolete in light of the changes happening in the world across all sectors.

Hence, the lockdown is also providing opportunities to reflect on the emerging world and to redesign the curriculum that will align with that world.  The critical challenges that currently confront TSIBA faculty is to understand the ‘new normal’ and then respond with: What to teach?  How to teach? What are the expected outcomes? How to integrate discipline-specific content holistically? This requires faculty to transcend habitual teaching methods as well as the bounds of specific content.

Beyond the teaching and learning curriculum, it’s also necessary to reassess how assessments are implemented and what is construed as a success. This provides opportunities for alternative assessment formats that rely on open-book assessments, journaling and greater emphasis on reflection, critical analysis and innovative thinking.

Since education also happens within a social context, Covid-19 has revealed stark inequalities in our society.  Hence TSIBA’s ongoing challenge will be to ensure that the teaching epistemology and learning approaches is not only about completing a curriculum, but also about ensuring that knowledge is meaningful and relevant to the lives of our students in the current context. Hence, empowering learners to be resilient, innovative and proactive are learnings that will yield immediate benefit. 

2.2 Teaching and Learning Tools

Despite TSIBA’s best efforts to provide learners with devices and data, these are handicapped by the following factors: 

• Lockdown protocols:  Education is not yet classified as an essential service and staff are unable to source and distribute requisite devices;

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• Many students are inaccessible: They are outside of the provincial boundaries of the Western Cape;

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• Data/equipment malfunction: Connectivity issues due to network coverage and equipment and data bundle malfunctions remain ongoing concerns.

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• Mitigating lack of learning tools/data through alternative methodologies:  TSIBA faculty need to skill themselves in alternative learning methodologies.  These include Action Research, Critical Theory and Constructivism to enable learners to learn using self-inquiry for theory-making. Therefore, with shortages of learning devices, data and functional learning spaces, effective learning can prevail with a transformed mindset in both teacher and learner.  

All academic disciplines can be taught and learnt through engaging the senses - observing; listening; thinking; journaling. The world is a ‘living classroom’ alive with science; math; economics; language. Applying experiential and action learning methodologies supported by educators who pose probing questions via online platforms or social media will enable effective theory-making and learning. Staff and students will be constantly engaged to explore new ways of teaching and learning.

3. Opportunities for Growth and Differentiation

What has been incredible during the period of lockdown, is the rejuvenation of nature. Birdsong from birds able to traverse smog-free skies, fish swimming in canals clear of shipping waste and humans in megacities seeing blue skies for the first time in years, speak directly to the sustainability of healthy life on the planet.

Organisations that can navigate and ‘sync’ with the ‘new normal’ are the one who will thrive in a post Covid-19 era.  For TSIBA, the following opportunities are emerging:

3.1 Entrenching a Culture of Excellence and Exceptionalism

TSIBA’s ‘Profile of Graduateness’ is a matrix of human-centred values to be lived by staff and students alike.  At the heart of this is ‘attitude’; the mindset that drives individual behaviour towards social empathy, service above self and ‘paying it forward’.  These are the values that will enable humanity to survive global and local catastrophes.  

There have been many, albeit disparate, incidents of excellent and exceptional service from staff during the lockdown. The positive value this brought to TSIBA deems it necessary that these values; excellence in conduct, in learning and stepping into a higher purpose for the common good (exceptionalism) is a worthy culture to embed at TSIBA.

3.2 Blended Learning; Blended Teaching

The online teaching and learning expertise provide two overlapping opportunities: to scale our curricula offerings through a blended learning approach; reduce the need for staff and students to physically present themselves at TSIBA House.  

Working/ learning from home will lighten the cost burden of staff and students through minimising travel costs, lower stress, minimise utility costs and reduce the carbon footprint.

3.2 Short Courses for Professional Development

The beta test of the Digikamva Learning Management System through the TSIBA Ignition Academy was a significant start and will be followed by the Business School.  

Using opportunities brought by the ‘platform economy’, collaborations with subject experts will provide additional opportunities for skills development through webinars or certified short courses through the TSIBA brand. Courses have already been developed by TSIBA Ignition Academy and the Entrepreneurial Planning Institute.

3.3 Social and Green Impact

High unemployment, poverty and environmental degradation are immediate challenges facing the world. These provide opportunities for the integration of social and environmental sustainability into the TSIBA academic curriculum as a critical imperative for future business leadership.

Further, the TSIBA Garage business incubator and for TSIBA Ignition Academy to be positioned to more assertive and responsive through practical courses and mentoring, that not only respond to social issues, but also to matters of the environment. The #Cocreatemycity initiative founded by Royal Netherlands Embassy in South Africa and in which TSIBA recently participated was a catalytic initiative which provided an opportunity for further collaboration, and one example of enhancing our social and green impact.

3.4 ‘AHA’ - Arts for Healing and Affirmation

For millennia, the arts - music; visual; spoken; have told our stories, healed our broken hearts and made our spirits soar. 

The intersection of art with other academic disciplines, as depicted in Frans Johansson’s The Medici Effect (2004), showed how multidisciplinary engagement can spur innovation and creative thinking. To this effect, TSIBA is in the process of developing the AHA - Arts for Healing and Affirmation initiative to integrate arts appreciation into the curriculum. The aim is also to invite artists to present their crafts at TSIBA House as we integrate the academic program with the world around us. 
 

In closing, in spite of the challenges we’re facing as a nation, the tagline associated with the Apollo Moon Mission, that ‘Failure is not an option!’ is more pertinent now than ever.  A sustainable and winning nation is what we owe to those who sacrificed their lives for a better South Africa and to our future generations. Therefore at TSIBA,  2020 must be the year in which we embrace Obama’s ‘audacity of hope’ rather than Charles Dickens’s ‘Winter of despair’.