Editor’s note: We would like to thank Vuyokazi Bacela, Language and Writing Consultant at the Teaching and Learning Centre at the University of Fort Hare, South Africa for providing this collection of responses. To contact the author, please email TLC. If you would like to share your writing center’s experience during COVID-19, please submit via WLN.

Vuyokazi Bacela

Coronavirus (Covid-19) is a novel virus where very little is known and scientists are still carrying out research to determine how the virus can be eliminated as well as learning its patterns. In March 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the COVID-19 a pandemic (WHO, 2020). Covid-19 symptoms can become very severe that it becomes more than pneumonia that killed and still kills millions of people around the world. The virus has resulted in the world changing the way of life to deal with and reduce the spread of the disease. The purpose of this writing is to reflect on how COVID-19 has affected my learning environment, the writing center and recommendations for the writing center and the university.

Home can be the best place for vacations where I stay for a shorter period and leave again. After the university sent us home when the lockdown commenced, I have accepted the fact that home is going to be my new learning environment. However, home is not a conducive environment where schoolwork can be done, as I have to do my chores and give my family attention. This attention includes having to teach the family about the importance of the hygiene, since I am the one who is exposed to such information from media platforms. Therefore, all this become strenuous because I do not get enough chance to sit in front of my laptop and do my research fully, as my attention is divided into many activities. Data on the other hand becomes the problem as I need internet access to study.

Since I am away from campus, Wi-Fi is substituted by data. Without it, academic and social life becomes difficult. Data is very expensive and one cannot live without it because it assists with searching for different sources that may help me writing up my research. However, it is difficult to continue with the research because of the expensive data, as there is no one working at home, only few family members are grant beneficiaries. As a result, I only buy data when the month ends. Therefore, I have decided to slow down with schoolwork. On the other hand, my supervisor is waiting for the corrected piece of work. All this is stressful, devastating and disturbing because I am not used to this kind of situation.

Covid-19 disturbed many processes at the writing center. These include peer facilitation and no more face-to-face consultations. As a result, the period of social distancing created a big gap in the writing centre because we worked as a family, where most of the times there was face-to-face interactions during working hours (meetings and shared learning). However, due to the expensive data, communication broke down; we have no work to do as the facilitators now because there are still some administration issues that need to be fixed for remote learning. Therefore, this whole situation is very stressful, as some of the important offices of the institution are not functioning as normal.

Since we are already in this situation, I would like to make few recommendations for the writing center and the institution as well.  The writing center could request a special budget from the Department of Higher Learning and Training (DHET) that would cover data costs for the peer facilitators. This is because assisting students without Wi-Fi, to enhance students’ academic writing needs sufficient internet data. Moreover, having the center to find a way of inventing an app specifically for our writing center where it would be running all our services could make things easier in times like these and even beyond Covid-19 era.  Again, there are negative consequences academically. Therefore, in the future from our levies a certain percentage must be taken to assist the students with online learning instead of waiting for the assistance from the government. Even now, a few students have received data, while others are continuing with the learning process others are left behind putting them at a disadvantage.

The coronavirus pandemic is negatively affecting families, our work, and academic excellence. If only the writing center and the university were having an extra budget to cover for online learning stress levels would be low to both students and staff. Through all these challenges, I have learnt that nothing beats preparedness.

References

World Health Organization (WHO). (2020). Coronavirus disease 2019. Retrieved from www.who.int › Emergencies › Diseases-novel-coronavirus-2019.