E-learning during COVID-19!

Introduction:

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an infectious disease caused by a severe syndrome known as “acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)”. The disease was first identified in 2019 in Wuhan, the capital of China's Hubei province, and has since spread globally, resulting in the ongoing pandemic. Symptoms include dry cough, accompanying flue and high fever.

Advantages:

As the rise in cases and death tolls is seen with every passing day. Most governments around the world, finding it as the only choice left, have temporarily closed educational institutions in an attempt to contain the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The biggest concern of many experts is that if we get too many infections too fast, the number of sick people could overwhelm the system’s capacity to care for them. By slowing transmission in the population, we may possibly flatten the curve, and keep the number of people sick at one time manageable.

Although it’s affecting the new born children and the aged people mostly, but the youngsters could play a role as the carriers of the virus. According to a recent research, the virus stays inactive for up-to 14 days which clearly shows how it’s killing the person silently.

Further, the school environment is well suited to spread disease. Students are often packed into small classrooms, where it’s impossible to sit six feet apart. They mingle and form other similar groups by changing rooms to go to different classes. They are put into one large room to eat together, sitting side by side. There’s no way that we can stop children from mixing with other students, sharing their food and water because that’s what they find fun in.

However, closing schools can make a big difference in flattening the curve, and the usual routine won’t be disturbed either. Hence, it’s the best practice that could be adopted by the institutes and holding online classes may ensure that the syllabus is covered in due time as scheduled, this way the students would stay engaged and will not be wasting time on useless things such as PUBG, Tic Tok etc.

Several social apps have been used to keep the school routine going s usual, for instance, MS Teams, Edmodo, Google Meet and Zoom. They have been helping in creating the school friendly environment and video calling.

Disadvantages:

These nationwide closures are impacting over 89% of the world’s student population. Several other countries have implemented localized closures impacting millions of additional learners.

The closures could mean students who are struggling to read at their grade level are promoted anyway and could struggle for years to come. Plans for college could be upended for high school seniors counting on their final semester to rack up credits and take one more stab at the SAT. For students from low-income families, who could have trouble getting to the free or subsidized food many of them rely on, the gap between them and their wealthier counterparts is all but sure to grow even more. But overall, every student will suffer.

Furthermore, all we will be getting from the online classes is:

·         Lack of Discipline. ...

·         Ready-made Answers. ...

·         Less creativity & more instruction. ...

·         No practical learning. …

·         Tough to find an environment for study. ...

·         Difficult to select best course & classes. ...

·         Scripted Lectures, and

·         Information overload

 

Moreover, online lectures will affect grades badly. As the fees have been paid for quality education not to simply download a video lecture, listen to it and sit idle. A student would never open a book himself unless he/she is pressurized by the teacher through a quiz or an upcoming test. And this would lead to laziness and lack of practice especially in Sciences. This way none of the students will have a doubt and the teacher will never know what problem the pupils are encountering. But even though the present situation is not fruitful for opening educational institutions, but still all of this should be taken into consideration.

It may be noted here that the quality of online education, that is being experimented for the first time in history, is not up to the mark as teachers are not fully equipped nor prepared with the required teaching material to teach online. Another problem that would rise is the intra-university competition and this way half of the students would be neglected regardless of the heavy fees they’ve paid, if one university is providing quality e-learning and the other is not, this would be unfair. Therefore, there must be a system that looks after the whole community equally.

The main hope of a nation lies in the proper education of its youth. Because, youth is the future of the nation. And considering the developing countries, not everyone is blessed with gadgets and technology. The question is: Who will be responsible for the GPA of students failing due to poor internet? No one, but the student himself after all.

CONCLUSION:

The conclusion comes out to be that the government should surely take action regarding this issue. Relevant steps must be adopted, and the quality of e-learning provided must be enhanced, so we can cope up with the academics and also prevent the students from wasting months on sitting idle and engaging into useless activities. Because nobody knows when and how will this pandemic come to an end, but we all should be well prepared for the worse that is yet to come.