Abaashieyah MosesWhen South Africa went into hard lockdown in March 2020, universities across the country scrambled to move lectures online. Screens replaced lecture halls, WhatsApp groups replaced tutorial rooms, and for thousands of students, learning suddenly meant staring at a laptop - if they were lucky enough to have one.
For Abaashieyah Moses, then a Master’s student at the University of the Western Cape (UWC), the disruption exposed something deeper: the way students survive, thrive, or stumble often depends on one thing - feedback.
“I came from an underprivileged high school, and when I got here in 2017, I realised that I was not as educated as many of my peers. That came into play in my second year, and I didn’t know how to fix it,” said Moses.
She matriculated from Lentegeur High School in Mitchells Plain, where societal ills were woven into the fabric of the school, from gangsterism to teenage pregnancies.
“But the teachers were very lovely. The experience definitely helped me grow,” said Moses.
And because both her parents were struggling financially, she would sell koeksisters and rotis to school staff and students on Fridays to make ends meet. In her third year, she built a relationship with her tutor.
That relationship improved her marks. Currently a lecturer in UWC’s English department, Moses hopes to start work on her PhD in the near future.
Her honours research on “Feedback Literacy” fed into her master's research.
“Feedback plays an important role in students’ learning and development,” Moses said.
“But during lockdown, it became clear just how much students rely on it, not just for marks, but for motivation and a sense of connection.”
Her research, completed in 2024, explored how third-year English students coped with the shift to online learning. What she found was both sobering and surprising. Moses said Ubuntu, or the sense of community, plays a pivotal role for students and how they perceive their academic progress and connections.
We usually think of feedback as the scribbled notes on the side of an essay - “awkward phrasing,” “check your referencing,” or the dreaded “unclear argument.” But Moses discovered that students see it as far more than corrections.
“Feedback is a kind of lifeline,” she explained. “When you don’t have the classroom, you don’t have those small reassurances from a lecturer’s nod or a quick chat after class. All you have is the written feedback. For many students, that became their main way of knowing they were on track.”
For some, this was a blessing in disguise. With more time to sit with written comments, they processed and applied the advice more carefully than they might have in a busy, face-to-face environment.
But for others, it was alienating. Without the warmth of a conversation, comments sometimes felt harsh or impersonal. “Students need to feel seen,” Moses notes. “A blunt remark on a PDF is very different from a tutor’s encouraging tone in person.”
Before the pandemic, many students relied on informal moments - catching a tutor after class, whispering a question to a peer - to make sense of their studies. Lockdown severed those connections. One student in Moses’s study described feeling “alone” in the system. Another said the isolation made them doubt whether they belonged at university at all.
Moses herself remembers the difference feedback made to her own studies.
“In my first and second years, my grades were average, no matter how much effort I put in. But in my third year, when I started going to consultations and building real relationships with tutors, my confidence - and my marks - improved dramatically. That’s when I realised feedback is not just about content. It’s about connection.”
Of course, not all students could access feedback. UWC serves many first-generation students, and during the pandemic, as many as 30% had no laptop or reliable internet. The University rushed to hand out devices through its #NoStudentLeftBehind campaign, but for some, feedback arrived too late or not at all.
“In a context like South Africa, we can’t separate feedback from inequality,” Moses stresses. “If you don’t have the tools to receive it, you’re excluded from a critical part of the learning process.”
So what can universities do? Moses’s research suggests practical fixes. Tutors could record short voice notes to go with written comments, making feedback feel more personal.
“What I think should happen is that universities should recognise that students have preferences and accommodate for that. Blended learning allows that, but then you’re skipping over a student that strictly prefers online learning or one who prefers face-to-face learning. You’re trying to get the middle, but you’re not going to meet everybody’s academic needs,” said Moses.
She acknowledged that having an online component for UWC would be nice, but it would add to the work of lecturers and also require additional funding. While the study focused on the lockdown years, its lessons go further. With universities increasingly turning to online platforms during protests, transport strikes, or even bad weather, feedback remains at the heart of how students learn.
“Good feedback motivates, guides and connects,” Moses concluded. “Bad feedback isolates and discourages. If we want students to succeed - especially in a country still shaped by deep inequalities - we need to treat feedback as more than an afterthought. It’s the heartbeat of learning.”
