It was only in April that she received funding to buy study material.
The anxiety Wilkinson suffered is a reality for many university students for at least the first quarter of the year — that is if they are lucky enough to eventually receive some form of funding to cover the high cost of textbooks.
“I was lucky enough to get funding around April but then if you don’t get funding and you can’t afford textbooks you just have to go without buying them and that’s the reality for some students,” Wilkinson said.
However, NMU physics lecturer Jano Jonker is on a mission to help solve this dilemma with his innovative online content platform giving students free access to alternative textbooks. Jonker’s innovation, Gamalial, is accessible via computers and an Android app currently undergoing testing.
On the platform, lecturers are able to create alternative textbooks, providing students with content that is relevant to their syllabus, and affording them the opportunity to learn at their own leisure.
“It has been very helpful for me because I live in Uitenhage and sometimes can’t get to class but with Gamalial I am able to access content and even watch some videos to help me with my physics module,” Wilkinson said.
First year BSc in Construction Studies student Kwakho Bovana echoed Wilkinson, saying the platform would save students from having to buy pricey textbooks.
“I am only taking physics as a module for one year and I didn’t get to use all the information in [the textbook] because the syllabus only covers some of it, so it feels like a waste of money to buy textbooks,” Bovana added.
Bovana and Wilkinson are two of the students who started using Gamalial in the second semester in 2019.
Jonker said the innovation had been inspired by his desire to address the issue of overpriced textbooks, which students were faced with all over the world.
The lecturer has already created his own alternative textbook, Introductory Physics, for his physics students at the institution, to serve as an online resource on conceptual physics that students can use instead of a textbook.
Jonker said the platform would also allow lecturers more contact time with students, especially those with limited science and physics backgrounds.
“Currently the lecturer has to rush through the syllabus, covering most topics only superficially and with barely enough time to do tutorials.
“Although group work, discussions, worked examples, and so on, are especially crucial for students like this, the limited contact time simply does not allow enough of it to be done,” Jonker said.
The platform requires lecturers to upload content and update it as needed to stay relevant to the subject and their structure of teaching.
This allows students to learn from home and use lecture times for discussions, group work and problem-solving activities.
“It uses my own online content framework called Gamalial, which allows authors, educators, trainers and companies to add value to their content [through] manuals, study guides, e- learning courses and so on, by hosting it online in an interactive, intuitive and cohesive web- based framework, using simple yet powerful WYSIWYG authoring capabilities, combined with project and user-management features,” Jonker said.
So far, the platform contains Jonker’s Introductory Physics alternative textbook and Beth Jeffery’s HyperEnglish, which contains information about research writing processes, academic skills and provides help with grammar, syntax and editing.
The students said it would be helpful if all their lecturers used the platform.
“It would be great because then we wouldn’t have to buy textbooks with a lot of unnecessary text, we would have the content available to us at all times, free of charge,” Bovana said.
The anxiety Wilkinson suffered is a reality for many university students for at least the first quarter of the year that is if they — are lucky enough to eventually receive some form of funding to cover the high cost of textbooks.
This article appeared in the Weekend Post (South Africa) on 2 November 2019 written by Zamandulo Malonde malondez@tisoblackstar.co.za