The rise in innovative education amidst COVID-19
Have you ever experienced distance learning, online platforms before the COVID-19 pandemic? How do you feel about the new learning environment and new opportunities arisen from online stages?
Currently, as a result of spreading the virus throughout the world, this online education system has become a prominent topic among students. Hence, in this article, we’ll identify what are the impacts we could see, on teaching and learning activities in the Sri Lankan context due to this COVID-19 pandemic.
As a student who is still learning through free education from pre-school to higher education, we have a clear idea about the education system in Sri Lanka. When the other countries’ trend to converting their traditional education system into an online platform only Sri Lanka is still having the traditional system. It means “present in class” physically. We could identify both pros and cons of this traditional educational system.
When concerning the situation before the pandemic, it is totally about physically being in the classrooms. Both the instructor/ teacher and students have to come to the class and have to learn or follow up the guideline. Within that scenario, students always depend on the teacher/ lecturer, and the students always in the belief that it is the teacher’s responsibility to cover the relevant capsules in the given time. As a result of that, students always depend on the person who is responsible for distributing the information and students by- heart all the facts in the textbooks without any concern. It is necessary to mention that this situation is quite changed as to start their learning as because of the barriers of physical classrooms.
They start to think more innovatively. Nowadays we could see instead of the physical classroom, students are learning via online platforms from the grade one to advanced level classes. They conduct their regular sessions through “Zoom” or on other popular platforms. With this sudden transformation, there can be seen both advantages and disadvantages for both parties. The background creates from online are not very much familiar for Sri Lankans.
Students feel something free within this period by questioning and answering on the students’ point of view because it generates more advantages as the students can participate for their lessons when he\ she has free time and they can listen to the lesson more than once if needed.
From the teaching side, it has not much changed their responsibilities. They have to search for information to teach and have to update their knowledge as earlier. Instead of that, Sri Lankan teachers have to learn how to manage new technologies. Nowadays we could find most of the teachers attend the schools as previously and give homework for their students.
Another fact is that which has to be specially mentioned is that technological capability and literacy. It has become a major interrogatory problem within Sri Lanka. This pandemic situation ticking the clock very slowly and create the background for both parties to upgrade their technological capabilities. Now the usage of social media and the use of online platforms for the educational system can be seen commonly. This may be considered as a remarkable turning point in the educational system in Sri Lanka as so many times they try to substitute this online system but it didn’t work out because of the bureaucracy. Hence, it is glad to hear that the Ministry of Education in Sri Lanka decided to continue this new upliftment of education to the future and they decided to continue 30%- 40% lesson capsules to be completed via online after this COVID-19 period.
Another crucial impact can be seen in this situation is creative teaching methods. Instead of reading textbooks or printed slide papers, virtual classrooms make an innovative and creative approach to instruct their students through animated pictures, clip arts, graphs and video clips. It is easy to define the lessons for the teachers.
We could see that these methods are experimented by our teachers/ instructors/ lecturers in the last few months. Sri Lanka is still a developing country, so the online environment collaborates to create a dynamic learning experience for both facilitator and student as it has never experienced before. However, virtual classrooms support not disinclines to ask questions. Students feel free environment for themselves. The major positive impact that happened is that this new learning environment contributes more self-direction and critical thinking.
Not only these, but we should also consider the negative impacts caused because of the massive changes in education as we cannot say there won’t be a dark side in this new change.
According to my perspective, the major difficulty that Sri Lankan students face is the accessibility to technology. Some Sri Lankan students suffered from the lack of access during the pandemic period. Sri Lankan students are suffering from being unable to capture the primary components of virtual education. We know that we need a laptop/ smartphone with a strong network connection. Hence, this significant issue can be seen in most rural and lower socio-economic environments because of many economic and logistic reasons. On the other hand, some students satisfied with these by their parents.
Hence the ones who are quickly allure to be a member of social media, spend their whole time within cyber networks. While most of the students search more and more facts/ information by not depending only on the teacher’s guidance. Thereby through this facility, they quickly absorb the facts that the students’ needs and increased individual learning.
Coming to the Sri Lanka context, the online method of education is highly effective and it generates mature self-discipline compared to the dependent learners. This new situation creates Sri Lankan students to have control over their learning experiences and flexible study schedule too.
Finally, we could identify both positive and negative impact within the teaching and learning activities. It is the student’s responsibility to absorb only the benefits while neglecting other impacts. It is worthy that our ministry would continue this new platform for the better enhancement of the students by giving permanent solutions for technological barriers.
