Conducting Law Pedagogy Using Virtual Classroom in the Era of COVID-19 Pandemic: Opportunities and Existing Obstacles

Abstract

Globally, the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic is disrupting the way of life, affecting not only humans’ health, but also the education sector and law pedagogy is no exception. In South Africa, before the COVID-19 pandemic, most pedagogies at the universities were being conducted face-to-face. The pandemic has inadvertently exposed the strengths and weaknesses of university in conducting pedagogies. Consequently, various educational institutions became creative, using their ICT staff to train teaching staff members on how to use various multi-modal technologies and devices to conduct pedagogy as face-to-face pedagogy is restricted. Law lecturers who pride themselves in conducting pedagogies through face-to-face were also coopted and retrained considering that most of the law lecturers are broadly conservatives and not technologically savvy. There is paucity of any scholarly information from law as a discipline hence, this paper fills the lacuna by looking at law pedagogy in the era of COVID-19 pandemic.

Received: 24 September 2020 / Accepted: 3 November 2020 / Published: 17 January 2021