As the first semester at the University of South Africa (Unisa) concluded, students submitted their assignments and completed various examinations for their Unisa courses. It was recently revealed that more than 380,000 assignments submitted by Unisa students in the first semester were not marked.
The information regarding the unmarked Unisa assignments was revealed in court documents of suspended registrar Prof. Steward Mothata, who was placed on precautionary suspension in June due to allegations of serious breaches of policy and misconduct
Inga Khethwa, a member of the Unisa Student Representative Council (SRC), voiced their concerns regarding the inadequacy of markers, suggesting that this shortage has directly contributed to the failure to assess and grade the submitted assignments. Unisa is South Africa’s largest university and is the academic home of more than 370,000 students.
The lack of an adequate number of markers is not the only challenge that is preventing assignments submitted by Unisa students from being marked.
Unisa's Information and Communications Technology (ICT) systems are also suffering from frequent failures, according to Khethwa. These failures have dire consequences, as they can potentially lead to the corruption of students' submitted assignments.
If a student's assignment file is corrupted, the lecturer/marker will be unable to view and mark the assignment. The SRC member emphasised the importance of rectifying the ICT system failures to safeguard against assignment corruption and enable a seamless grading process.
Khethwa is hopeful that these challenges can be resolved. They have suggested that there may be a need for Unisa to increase the number of markers to ensure assignments submitted by Unisa students can be marked.
I mean it doesn't make sense that the student would write and finish exams without getting their marks, so it is quite worrisome and we have raised these issues in key strategic internal meetings
Khethwa warned that if these issues are not resolved, they will wage a relentless war against Unisa’s management.
We are trying, by all means, to make sure that all these issues are accommodated because it can't be correct that students as the primary stakeholders are the ones who are suffering the most
Challenges At Unisa
It was also revealed that 150,000 Unisa students passed less than half of their modules in the 2022 academic year. Khethwa believes that may be attributed to the mode of learning at the university.
Unisa uses an Open Distance e-Learning (ODeL) education model which means that students do not attend classes in person and learn from a distance. Additionally, students participate in examinations online.
While online learning may offer flexibility, access to diverse courses, and enhanced learning resources, not all students can adapt to this way of learning.
Khethwa says many of the students enrolled at Unisa shortly after obtaining their Matric qualification. They argue the learning model used by Unisa may not be suitable for individuals who recently completed school and the university may need to adapt to accommodate these students.
