It was a time where educational institutions were scrambling to set-up bootlegged versions of online teaching to maintain some level of normalcy for students—be it school or university students — it called for a time to look into how the future of education is going to be. Is this an indication to regurgitate the education system? What were we doing wrong, and how do we make it right this time?
The obstacle course :
Right off the bat, the online learning model is still the best alternative as keeping schools open poses a safety risk for students. However, many institutions were lacking the proper infrastructure to conduct online classes that are seamless, and accessible to all but this was quickly overcome by many countries with the help from local governments. The biggest challenge in this is actually the rate of online-learning adoption that varies from country to country. Students find it confusing to adjust to as they had not been prepared through simulations or practices beforehand. Also, students reported the home-learning program to be even more stressful than regular classrooms because they were missing out on peer support as online learning tend to feel claustrophobic as it is basically just you and the screen.
These situations are still minor in comparison to students in unfortunate households — be it due to poverty or even, domestic abuse. Of course, this will lead students who have no access to a device or internet connection to have a difficult time maintaining their grades. In Malaysia, the government introduced Kelas@Rumah, a daily television show that is available on a free-to-view television channel to cater to certain households’ incapability to purchase these gadgets. In addition, the Malaysia government also took some initiative to provide 1GB free internet through selected telco companies throughout the Movement Control Order.
The absence of a guidelines pre-COVID is a wake-up call for educators too. Just like students, educators had to work three-times harder to keep the spirits up while maintaining as the torchbearers for the sake of education. The appropriate strategy in most countries is to use all possible and accessible delivery modes with the infrastructure that is at hand. There are online tools to assure that lesson plans, videos, tutorials, and other resources are available for some students and probably, most teachers for all levels of education. Numerous applications for educational purposes have been introduced as a solution for these matters such as Google Classroom, Google Hangouts, Google Meet, Cisco Webex, Microsoft Teams and the most popular application Zoom.
One of the main challenges of this pandemic-driven online learning includes engagement rate between teachers, lessons and students. Also, we must not overlook parents or guardians who are actually with younger school children who are also sucked into this adoption program. Educators like school teachers, university lecturers, teaching fellows, and academic staffs had to reinvent their courses for remote delivery; but also get to improvise their contents for bite-size learning, appropriate for different modes of media. Academic institutions also take part in bringing a sense of normalcy for students, which was very much needed in such an unprecedented time.
Moreover, this gives an opportunity for these institutions to revisit their goals and perhaps, invent new ones— ones that are aligned and focused on the quality of education received versus the number of hours clocked in by students and teachers for the sake of it. You’ll learn how education sectors can thrive despite the pandemic on the next post.
