Daily Times

Students have demanded improvement in quality of online classes started by various higher educational institutions on the directives of the Higher Education Commission (HEC) as they were facing problems like poor internet service and lack of teachers to understand the topics.

As per details, the students of far-off areas faced internet issues and were unable to grasp the lectures as there were a lot of technical concepts which could not be understood without the help of teachers.

Academic staff of these institutes was of view that they had no other option but to stick to the HEC and HED directives to teach online. They, however, admitted that students were facing various troubles while learning online.

Shamroz Shams Abbasi, a student of geology department of Abbottabad University, said that there is the fact that students studying at AUST mostly belong to rural areas devastated by poverty and infrastructural neglect. While students residing in remote and far-flung areas do not have an easy access to Internet as most of them do not possess nor can afford smartphones, laptops or other necessary gadgets. Thus, education online is available and affordable to a selective few.

Muhammad Jibran, another student of department of International Relations GPGC Mandian, Abbottabad while approaching to this correspondent told that on the directives of Higher Education Department Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa college has launched online learning while majority of teachers are not fully acquainted with software and the same holds true for most students. The administration urged faculty to be more flexible, many students were still left behind due to their lack of digital access. New assignments and quizzes were being assigned to us every week and many felt exhausted trying to keep up with the pace. Owing to the remoteness and technical glitches, students face connectivity issues, continuous buffering, frequent disconnection, a persistent static in audio, and video lagging. These issues need to be addressed properly for smooth functioning of online learning.

Madam Tahir Nigar, BS Coordinator GPGC (Women) Mandian, Abbottabad told The Frontier Post that teaching online seemed a massive undertaking earlier and the feeling still looms. There are two main assumptions that underlie online teaching. Firstly, that the students and faculty has digital access, computers and internet connections, capable of withstanding heavy bandwidth calls. Secondly, that all faculty members must be trained to teach online.

The faculty members are being trained to teach online as previously most of us have gained our experience in face-to-face classrooms. Teaching online requires both technical expertise and a revised pedagogy to engage with students online means relying on certain tools and altering instructions accordingly.

When contacted, Coordinator Joint Management Council (JMC) Abbottabad Prof. Jameel Awan stated that online learning has been started in ten BS colleges under his jurisdiction and standard operating procedure has been followed though there are some loopholes in the system which are being addressed timely.

Prof. Dr Hidaytullah, Public Information Officer Abbottabad University while talking to The Frontier Post told that for training of faculty an intensive online training course had been arranged by the Universities, during May, 2020. Replying to the question of problems faced by the students he informed that as per HEC instructions, the students can access teaching material available on youtube recordings or in form of notes sent to them through Whatsapp and in worst case scenario, they can freeze their semester as well.

While speaking to this correspondent, Secretary Higher Education Department Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Hassan Yousafzai responded that they are busy in addressing the queries as this is a whole chain of events from classes to exams and then new admissions and they are trying to sequence things.