The influence of Covid-19 pandemic on academic performance of University students in Zimbabwe

Abstract

The immediate response to preventing the spread of Covid-19 by many countries was to go into lockdown which led to the closure of many tertiary institutions and transformation to online teaching and learning. The purpose of this study was to assess challenges affecting the performance of students at tertiary institutions in Masvingo and their social wellbeing due to Covid-19 induced lockdowns. The research was carried out in one school at a local university using a semi-structured questionnaire for students and interviews for lecturers. Only 6.25% of all respondents indicated that the pandemic did not impact on how lectures were conducted. The most used and preferred online learning/study material dissemination platforms were ranked as follows Whatsapp> Google classroom > email. Chi square test showed a significant (p<0.05) association between gender and the most preferred learning platform. Main challenges presented by the lockdowns for both male and female students were high data costs and poor internet connectivity. The lecturers observed that online teaching was being affected by high data costs, failure by universities to supply data and the unavailability of electronic gadgets. There was a significant association (Chi square test, p<0.05) between gender and social effects of Covid-19 pandemic with struggle to paying university fees being the common problem among both male and female students. According to this study, Online learning and Teaching using Whatsapp was the most effective way to go under Covid-19 induced lockdown. Research needs to be done in different schools that is including arts and commerce.