A review of COVID-19's digitalisation of built environment education

Abstract

The coronavirus pandemic that unexpectedly took over the world in early 2020 has resulted in the rapid digitalisation of education in the built environment. The closure of higher education institutes due to the global shutdown instituted by authorities significantly impacted the academic realm. As a result, traditional face-to-face teaching and learning in engineering education programs had to transform to a completely online learning pedagogy. However, a seamless shift to an online pedagogy in a developing country such as South Africa was difficult as it exposed several challenges. These challenges have since become the ‘new normal’ in higher education institutes of developing countries including engineering programs. A comprehensive traditional literature review focusing on online learning due to the pandemic was conducted. This study provides an overview of the various pedagogical approaches adopted from research databases. The keywords ‘Online learning’, ‘E-Learning’, ‘Construction education’ and ‘Online pedagogy’ were used to search the databases. Findings from the study revealed that various pedagogies were implemented online to assist students to adapt to the online mode of instruction. However, it was further identified that students in developing countries faced technical challenges accessing digital work, challenges accessing online learning platforms, internet connectivity, adequacy of technology and challenges adapting to a student centred approach.

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http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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Identifiers

DOI

https://doi.org/10.17868/strath.00082029

Repository URI

https://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/82029/