The delusion of institutionalizing online learning

On the one hand, a LEARNING management system is an online learning platform or portal where lecturers upload lecture notes, slides, or videos for specific courses, and on the other hand, students download relevant materials, submit assignments, and take whatever assessments are required. LMS isn’t exactly a cutting-edge learning method. Learning is invariably mediated through socio-cyber space, and it’s been a vital feature of every effective “management system.”

Schools in Nigeria, in general, have not been digitally institutionalized and equipped to fulfill the demands of online teaching and learning. And, in terms of online learning, we’re well behind since our educational system wasn’t built on a digital foundation, and we’ve been tasked with the decades-long task of recalibrating the education sector to its proper place of competence and performance.

The new learning environment that the epidemic has created is incontrovertible social proof and an unavoidable fact that students will not be physically gathering to learn for an extended amount of time, necessitating the development of spatial-learning modes, models, and platforms. It’s such a submissive way of expressing physical education is over.

The deception of lecturers who profess to be technical “know-hows” but have been systematically developed and reared by the old “paper-and-pencil” technique of teaching and learning is often posing a significant threat to students who have been harmed by such learning procedures.

The danger it implies is, of course, students’ massive underperformance, who must find it a herculean challenge just to get to class, let alone attend one Zoom lecture interrupted by power outages and insufficient data, who are under strain and in a grueling condition to comprehend one or two things.

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, students are dealing with an endemic condition that is both painful and dangerous. However, the fact that students would not seldom experience social distancing and other such behaviors is definitely a selling point that they may resume physical learning in some fashion. That is not to mean that the pandemic’s prevention protocols would not be followed.

No! That’s exactly what it would do, and that’s exactly what it should do! This viewpoint should not be regarded as harmful, especially when one considers that it is held in churches and mosques.

With the regulations and fines imposed on schools in relation to religious entities, I venture to claim that we are devaluating and devaluing the role of education in national-building and national growth. There could not have been a more devastating pandemic, in my opinion.

Education, not religion, is the lifeblood and spring of all that we do, contributing to or subtracting from social standards, moral principles, and overall national achievement, depending on how we handle it.

What is the fate of students trying to learn online, download an avalanche of lecture slides and resources that are largely untaught, all while dealing with inconsistent internet connectivity, erratic power, and costly data purchases from telecommunications network service providers?

To be sure, the lecturers would concede that moving virtual is technically a will-o’-the-wisp because of how stochastic and sterile the operational system is in adapting to the “new normal.” In other words, it’s a waste of time to try the impossible in an overly monolithic setting on the one hand, and the desire for physical learning may be overly emphasized on the other. The Bottom line is that it is not working for them!

After all, students will be the ones on the receiving end. The new policy appears to favor instructors who have been monochromatically programmed, nay, in tabula rasa, to attend late classes.

The students would be the ones chasing them down, reminding them, calling them, and squandering their valuable airwaves and time in a diluted, prevaricated, soporific, jejune, ‘story-telling,’ ‘song-singing,’ mumbo-jumbo class.

Because of the epidemic, the story would have been practically attached to the sinker. This is, for the most part, the situation in higher education institutions.

Well, these lecturers have been cheated out of their pay, especially with the Federal Government’s inexorable enrollment of the new Integrated Payroll and Personal Information System mode of payment, which effectively denied certain senior staffers their rights, despite the daggers-drawn altercation of one world-without-end Memorandum of Understanding.

The solution to this is to ensure the labourers get paid and the learners get quality education. And quality education is integrating, not IPPIS, but computer-assisted standards of learning the pandemic has envisioned for us. Period! It’s a good thing that now we’re embracing Zoom, Telegram, and the like, to hold two-or-so hour classes.

But beyond that, we need to start funding and supporting our social-science and engineering departments; encouraging and sponsoring them to compete with their global peers; and making use of and promoting our domestically-produced technological inventions locally and internationally. That’s what could squarely cement the synergy between the parents, the President, those in loco parentis, and those in status pupillari.

If we’re going online, then students should not have problems accessing the internet put in place by the managements.

Remember, it’s a “management system,” not “student system.” They should not be deeply sorrowful and regretful ever coming to school, namely, the freshers. Some of these students absolutely depend on this that they use it to take tests, submit assignments, and eventually and if possible, take exams. It would be so, so catastrophic for them if they in the end see the outcome. It’s not ideal to use their ‘pocket-money’ on data that’s largely predictably going to shatter their hopes on crucial days. That would be abundantly outrageous.

And if we’re going physical, which is what’s presumably going to work if the former is not, we should strictly adhere to the safety measures put in place in preventing COVID-19. Simple! And as though they’re babes, they’ve been baby-seated in baby-walkers, while the babes themselves are physically learning in school every now and then.

Social distancing and mask-wearing are increasingly becoming acceptable norms in society. Instead of students being socially distanced away from hearing and learning anything because the lecturer’s voice and slides have been severely obstructed and screenly obfuscated, I’d rather suggest such protocols and practices be done physically.

Source: The Vanguard