Reimaging the Higher Education System in Pakistan through Cloud-Based Learning
The current outbreak of novel COVID — 19 has not only decelerated the pace of significant industries like tourism, aviation, and food, it has also severely impacted the universities and students globally. A report issued by UNESCO in March 2020 quotes 1.4 billion (80 percent) learners across the globe impotent to attend their respective schools, colleges, and universities owing to the imposed COVID — 19 lockdowns. (McCarthy, 2020).
Universities in the developed nations are somehow capable of coping with this skyrocketing issue of education with the help of technology, specifically, excellent internet facilities and students’ response. On the contrary, universities in the developing nations are finding it hard to deal with online teaching owing to the internet facility and limited bandwidth, electricity issues, and students’ responsiveness. In this scenario, what universities need to do to engage the students and, of course, to build teachers’ capacity?
For now, unfortunately, we have ruled out the best scenario case — things will not get better quickly for Pakistani Universities, owing to the sudden rise in the COVID — 19 cases (2,450 cases in Pakistan and 1.1 million globally, as of April 04, 2020) reported by National Institute of Health, Pakistan and world meter website, respectively.
“Do not wait until all the facts are in — they may never be — to act. In a crisis, good now is better than perfect later.”
Given the situation, we are not left with any other option to switch to a virtual teaching environment, which has changed the educational system at 360 degrees. That is called Cloud-Based Learning, which comprises of “virtual learning room” at home for both the Virtual Teacher and Virtual Student. Both need a well-equipped computer system and high-speed internet facility at convenience. For now, we can only confine to adopting this model without introducing the issues related to this system. However, I used a Design Thinking Methodology (Hasso-Plattner), which helps to tackle complex problems in a human-centric way and create empathic paths to identify the problems and action nodes. Then, develop a small prototype and tests it, keeping the budget constraints in mind. I have identified 33 empathic paths on which universities may work and develop their plan to cope with the issue. For example, Virtual Teacher: Computer System, Fast Speed Internet, Dedicated Space at Home, Students Evaluation & Grading System, Students Progress Dashboards. Virtual Students: Computer System, Fast Speed Internet, Dedicated Space at Home. Computer System: Technical Support Required, Uploading/Transferring Data, Downloading/Receiving Data. This system itself is very challenging for Pakistan to implement due to the meager dedicated budget — the education system only gets 2.4 percent (97.16 billion) of the national GDP, which is lowest in the region. It has also reduced to 77.26 billion in the 2019–20 fiscal year budget (Amin, 2019).
Nevertheless, it is the time for our higher education to play the role of catalyst and adapt to the changes as quickly as possible. However, at the micro-level, each university and institutions must realize that they can strategically improve their ability to respond to these shocks in the future. It will help them grow and sustain in the long run. Therefore, it is very critical for the universities to redefine their vision, mission, and objective by undertaking the scenario analysis and planning.
Furthermore, during this time, the leadership role is essential to provide a clear and motivational direction to the faculty. As teachers are demotivated, leaders must encourage them, incentivize them to learn new skills, and improve pedagogical techniques for online teaching. A humble way is to treat every faculty member as an agent of change and assign them small tasks to get connected with the students for teaching, feedback, and motivation. Further, another essential step is the establishment of a dedicated center at the university that will work to collaborate internally and externally to reduce the virtual and line hindrances. For this, the introduction of an intra and inter local connectivity model for institutes and peer-to-peer learning can work. Next, the university admission and students’ affair office can be used to identify their location and make phone calls individually to help them and address their issues in the best possible way. Lastly, a virtual dashboard must be developed to share and monitor the activities of all stakeholders, in particular, for students, the learning curve and assessment. Besides, the parents must be introduced as a stakeholder of this new learning system.
Along with these all academic and teacher-centric actions, there is a severe need to understand the issues at students’ end. Motivation to learn online, give virtual exams, and complete assignments are the subjective variables that can only be achieved through commitment and clear communication. They are at the receiver’s end, and continuous feedback is vital in developing and improvising this new system. Therefore, their active involvement in this evolutionary process is as vital and mandatory as oxygen to humans.
Concluding all, there is a need to respond instantly to the rising failure of the Traditional Educational System. With the help of the design thinking model and working virtually and collaboratively, universities and institutes in Pakistan can establish a new and improvised educational system that may sustain in the future to cope with any abrupt shock. It is recommended to respond immediately but in perspective to reduce the operational losses of the current system and the fatalities. May we all contribute to the betterment of Virtual Educational Learning. Teachers, opting for this, will be working at war footing to save the future generation time by putting students first, given with limited resources at home.
The author is working as a Professor of Economics at Sukkur IBA University, Sindh, Pakistan. May be contacted at waqar.akram@iba-suk.edu.pk
