Reflection on the transdisciplinary approach involving students in educating communities about COVID-19

INTRODUCTION: The disruption brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic to higher education teaching and learning, as well as to the community engagement opportunities, has also brought about some new learning opportunities. The purpose of the research was to explore the views and to describe their thoughts of the School of Healthcare Sciences (SoHCS) and the Faculty of Engineering, Built Environment and Information Technology (EBIT) undergraduate students' on the use of robotics and technology in educating the communities about COVID-19. METHODS: Participatory Action Research (PAR) was used for this study since the students from SoHCS and EBIT were invited to be active participants as future professionals. A total of 27 students volunteered and participated in in-depth interviews. The responses were analysed using ATLAS.ti from nine data sets for qualitative content. Data reduction, coding, and decoding analytic processes were used to analyse and interpret each of these qualitative data forms. Ethical approval was obtained from the research ethics committees in the Faculty of Health Sciences as well as the Faculty of Engineering, Built Environment and Information Technology. RESULTS: Five themes that emerged from this study are namely: COVID-19 and community challenges and behaviour; COVID-19 communication; COVID-19 knowledge and understanding; COVID-19 myths and COVID-19 robotics and technology education. CONCLUSION: COVID-19 has proven to be a driver of technology innovation and can create new high-touch and high-quality services. Using information technology and robotics in health sciences or in community engagement projects would minimizes the exposure of health care workers and members of the communities to possible infections. These findings also reflect on the importance of engaging the students when interventions are planned because they play an important role as members of the community within the university and outside the university.