Daily Times

The education system is already struggling to provide physical learning resources. Since the appearance of the Coronavirus-19 in December last year, nearly every aspect of regular life in Pakistan has been transformed. The Education sector has been affected hugely with the closing of classes and calls for efficient education emergencies to overcome the academic loss. Academic institutions are now searching for new learning avenues by going online. Educators are finding that the compromised state of curriculum development in Pakistan is not going to help matters. Without professionals experienced in bringing about rational changes, and with little awareness of how to compare, judge and evaluate, Pakistan’s attempts are likely to make little progress. Following the power coercive, top-down instruction from the Higher Education Commission (HEC), universities equipped with digital equipment can commence online teaching immediately, while other under-resourced universities should ensure their setup for online learning before commencing. Private universities are more likely to struggle, but what are the criteria for choosing the materials for more established universities? Static pictures of the lecturer’s notes? Videos of students asking questions about the notes? Does every university course has the same objectives, the same content and the same profile of assessments? The HEC could build up a curriculum bank of courses and assessment schemes that universities could draw upon, but does the HEC have the quality of staff to attempt this? I shall return to the role of the HEC.

HEC Founder, Dr Attaur Rehman, said on the emergency education:

“I had prepared a website at which I had accumulated thousands of excellent courses at school, college and university level. These include courses from MIT, Stanford University, University of California and many other top universities. It also has school level courses from Khan Academy. Our educational institutions should start using these free materials immediately.”

E-learning resources are available from top universities, so the HEC curriculum bank could become a resource for such items.

Former HEC Chairperson, Dr Javaid Laghari, believes, “everyone in Pakistan does not have equal and free access to the internet, particularly broadband. It should be level playing first. Secondly, all faculty don’t have the same capability to teach online. Thirdly, all programs are not equal. Easy for social sciences but not for engineering and medicine. All universities are not equally capable to do that. Unless the learning outcomes are the same as for offline, the quality will not be the same for all. So universities must be given two years to develop virtually, of course, HEC must open a new division to monitor progress, there must be an independent online accreditation agency to review and approve. HEC must find universities to develop online.”

“I had prepared a website at which I had accumulated thousands of excellent courses at school, college and university level. These include courses from MIT, Stanford University, University of California and many other top universities. It also has school level courses from Khan Academy. Our educational institutions should start using these free materials immediately.”

To effectively develop learning resources, I suggest that universities should bid to establish packages for our most common courses, using what little experience they have of course/curriculum development.

In theory, universities are expected to adopt flexible sources of remote learning by using recorded lectures and online sessions through Zoom and meetup. Distance learning should involve tutorial support, free online courses and e-learning stations through occasional face-to-face communications with resource persons. In practice, in Pakistan, there will be challenges concerning on-line connections and the accessibility of digital tools.

As Nadia Siddiqui from Durham University has remarked, “Online learning has a high technology reliance and fast speed on the internet so the universities must meet these requirements at a world-class level before online education becomes a norm.”

The education system is already struggling to provide physical learning resources. This new digitalised movement in academia has to face the attitudes of teachers towards a system they have no training for and their willingness to accept an e-learning system, which was imposed from outside by a centre with possibly less know-how than themselves in setting up online sessions. From the students’ perspective, what about the affordability of the digital tools, internet access, browsing the web and the stability of the electricity supply? And in rural areas?

Head of the MD Program at VinUniversity, Hanoi, said, “Online learning needs huge investment in terms of resources both physical and human at the institutional level. In a country like Pakistan, this needs to be carefully thought with Open University and Virtual University on board. It is a fact that synchronous learning will be a disaster so more energy may be directed towards asynchronous learning. A student may be sent key resources on a CD with printed material and satellite offices and academics may be identified to support students.”

Since the online assessment would be a relatively new concept to assess students’ achievement through online teaching, there is a high risk. Exams and tests are a breeding ground for academic integrity, and this online testing raises apprehensions about high-tech remote-proctoring choices, said Dr Asad Masood (Zayed University).

Implementing e-learning in Pakistan would be a gigantic undertaking in the best of times, so today, in the presence of the virus, what can be done realistically?

Besides economic constraints, what preparation is being considered to design pedagogical models to align with technology? The design of learning resources requires a coordinated team approach comprising of content specialists, academicians of learning theory and curriculum development and professional experts in technology. This would be a long-term project.

In the short term, plans are required to build up a library of resource video materials to be broadcasted on TV and DVD in the form of online lectures and tutorials developed by the universities. These “courses” would be developed on an ad-hoc basis by those universities expressing interest. The courses would form a “Virtual Campus” and their operation would act as a pilot study for the proposed national project of e-learning. A later evaluation would learn from the successes and failures before rolling out the full national scheme.

So, in the short term, universities could start and prepare virtual courses in the normal academic sessions as a regular practice and should establish virtual libraries and laboratories for the students. This virtual learning trend will minimise the economic burden of the universities as teachers and students can work from home as a regular practice. This type of learning will also make the student a more independent learner, and save commuting hours for both students and teachers if the class does not have to meet formally. Universities should extend their collaboration with IT companies for telecommunications applications, such as teleworking and teleconsultation, to facilitate academic affairs. It would be a joint venture between academic institutions and IT companies to produce a positive impact on the higher education sector during the national emergency.

This re-orientation of higher education towards e-learning requires rigorous and creative solutions. These are unlikely to already exist “in-house.”

The problem should be opened up by inviting interested university educationists and IT experts from the private companies to a “brain-storming” conference hosted by the HEC to seek suggestions for transforming the current, exclusively physical system to an online one. Solutions are to be looked for in both the short- and long-term. Meanwhile, individual universities are expected to try out, within their capabilities, e-learning trials. These trial outcomes would be collated by the HEC to set up a solid information base for the longer-term national e-learning project.

Dr sadia freelance contributor