An investigation of how the lecturer promotes meaning-making when teaching cell biology to 1st year Natural Sciences pre-service teachers in an e-learning classroom on the BigBlueButton conferencing platform

Abstract

The past outbreak of the novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) greatly affected South African higher education which led to a complete closure of universities. The closure of universities has provided an opportunity for institutions to engage in their preparedness to use digital platforms. According to Mashau and Nyawo (2021), eLearning describes learning that depends on modern technologies to deliver students learning content. This study explored how the lecturer promotes meaning-making when teaching cell biology to pre-service teachers in an e-learning classroom. The study sought to find out which teaching strategies are useful to promote meaning-making in the teaching and learning of cell biology in an eLearning classroom. The study identified the teaching strategies that were used by the lecturer when teaching cell biology and examined how the lecturer used the teaching strategies to promote engagement which create an opportunity for meaning-making to be promoted. A qualitative approach was used due to its versatile nature when observing and interpreting human behavior and experiences. The lecturer was interviewed to understand the reasoning behind why he used the different teaching strategies. Data were collected from video-stimulated interviews and BigBlueButton video observations. Data analysis for this study was both deductive, using a thematic approach. The findings of the study established that the lecturer used question-and-answer, multimedia, and explanation teaching strategies across all the lectures observed, and the question-and-answer teaching strategy was dominant across the three lectures observed. However, different teaching strategies promote meaning-making differently. The findings also revealed that for the teaching strategies to be effective in promoting meaning-making in the BigBlueButton classroom, contextual factors such as class size and teaching and learning resources are important in making decisions on how to engage students.