Inclusion and Higher Education Curriculum in the Post-COVID-19 Era and Implications for Technology-Based Learning

Introduction

COVID-19 has brought some adaptive and transformative challenges to the education system across the globe. For most of these impending challenges, there are no preconfigured clues for responses. In low- and medium income households, as well as in developing countries such as Africa, COVID-19 has exacerbated the existing inequalities in education – such as poor access, and the challenges thereof (Aborode et al., 2020), that pose a threat to education inclusion and meeting the learning needs of individual students. Before the pandemic, inequality and exclusion in educational opportunities were among the major problems that the education systems across countries in Africa contended with (Simson, 2013). Although education has been identified as an instrument for social justice, achieving this ideal has not been realized in these countries. Inclusive Education, as advocated by Salamanda (1994) is widely adopted in institutions of higher learning, and yet implementation problems have posed considerable challenges to the education system, lecturers, and stakeholders at large (Crawford et al., 2020; Ting et al., 2020). Although education inclusion is implemented to the point of admitting and teaching students with diverse needs in regular education classrooms, these learning needs (cognitive, psychological, and social) are rarely met in these classrooms (Ng'ethe, Subotzky & Afeti, 2008; Tomlinson, 2014).

The advent of technology-based education in primary and secondary contexts has sparked calls for innovative approaches to teaching and learning in institutions of higher learning, due to COVID-19. Technology-based learning and assistive technology have been encouraged as evidence-based approaches for inclusive instruction. However, before COVID-19 struck, these technologies were rarely used in inclusive contexts in lower levels of education in Africa (Aborode et al., 2020). Having been fully adopted as part of the new-normal, owing to COVID-19 education response, technology-based instructions have been widely adopted across the continent. Equity and inclusion ought to be given priority in adapting and implementing curriculum in institutions of higher learning that would speak to the new-normal (Armitage & Nellums, 2020; Berger et al., 2020; Lambert et al., 2020).

This move then, raises questions such as, How can the innovative technology-based teaching and learning make sense to all learners, irrespective of their diversities? How can technology-based learning assist within the space of meeting all the learning needs of students in classrooms? With these questions in mind, some authors and organizations have provided guidelines for the implementation of inclusive technology-based learning (Armitage & Nellums, 2020).

However, changes in the education system, brought by the COVID-19 crisis, have been welcomed as a promising future of learning, and the accelerated changes in modes of delivering quality education, cannot be separated from the imperative of leaving no one behind. However, it has been found that most lecturers in inclusive education are unable to effectively implement technology-assisted learning to meet the diverse needs of students (Coady, Harper & De Jong, 2016; Leacock & Warrican, 2020). Therefore, this chapter lends itself to discussing how students’ needs can be met in the post-COVID-19 inclusive classroom settings, and how technologies can assist in achieving effective inclusive education at the same time. The chapter, therefore, looks at how COVID-19 has impacted teaching and learning, how students with special learning needs will be impacted in the post-COVID-19 era, the changing dynamics in inclusive classroom contexts in the post-COVID-19 era, supportive and assistive technology in the COVID-19 era, as well as implications for technology-based learning. We are of the view that getting acquainted with these dimensions would enable lecturers and stakeholders to respond to the challenges of inclusion education in the post-COVID-19 era.