Daily Times

After the world was hit by COVID-19 last year, no mode of education has yielded fruitful results. On the contrary it has increased anxiety and frustration amongst students, teachers and parents because of poor performance and outcome. Its reason is the frequent attempts the authorities made to shift modes of education from In-person to Online and then reversing it. Some students protested against in-person exams while others wanted physical classes. On the whole, this situation needs to be addressed for a timely and workable solution to save our young generation from being called educated-illiterates.

Since June, most educational institutions have been struggling to start in-person classes, but the high temperatures are making it difficult to conduct lessons. Some of the institutions are planning to keep online classes with certain reservations. Keeping in view the aforesaid, the best planning is to maintain a hybrid system of education because pandemics, and natural calamities can frequently force us to halt our regular systems and revert to some workable solution.

Higher authorities in the education sector need to establish a hybrid system of instructions at all levels on a permanent basis. The ratio of in-person learning and online learning can be fixed as per level, need and type of degree. Generally speaking, 30 to 40 percent of instruction may be fixed for online education and remaining may be allocated to in-person education. Hybrid education has been practiced successfully in national as well international institutions. The rising universities in Asia, well-established universities in US and Europe wrote in their admission ads that they would offer online semesters and in person. Similar experiment was conducted in the weekend programs of Pakistani universities, they made it mandatory for the teachers and students to get connected on their respective Learning Management System (LMS) to fulfil deficient credit hours.

Since June, most educational institutions have been struggling to start in-person classes, but the high temperatures are making it difficult to conduct lessons

Online system can only be successful if a number of things are resolved. An established and faultless Internet service is needed and the portals must be of good quantity and quality. Students should be provided with subsidized cell phones, tablets or laptops with the required software fixtures used only for learning. Online teaching and learning must be monitored by the technical as well the academic authorities every hour. Similarly, marks must be reserved for and fixed for the online component of the learning. In order to regulate such activity, expert staff and faculty may be recruited.

During lockdown many educational institutions have heavily invested in systems of instructions. The faculty also upgraded themselves for this type of teaching and as a result, each institution, especially those of higher education, have established their YouTube channels with useful content for the benefit of the students. The Higher Education Commission used to spend millions for holding seminars and conferences but due to online webinars the costs are cut down drastically. These webinars must be made compulsory part of the teaching process but it should not be just a luxury rather activities should be connected with these and students may be forced to engage with these in true letter and spirit.

Same exercise may be conducted in revising the curricula. The portions which can be easily taught and tested may be allocated to online teaching, learning, testing and the remaining ones may be taught in the classrooms. On the other hand, the educational institutions must ensure the observance of Corona SOPs by law with no violation of the same may be tolerated.

We need to reform our examination systems as well. Traditional exams test the memory of students but they are a misfit in highly advanced technological society. Under the present system of education, learning and testing would make our young men and their learnings redundant in the high-tech future societies. Examination may test the creative, research and exploratory characteristics and training and skills relevant to these. This type of examination would be fit for the online testing as well because the traditional methods tempt the students to cheat and copy in examinations. Another way to protect the system from defaulting is that, very efficient software of plagiarism checks may be used. The system should not accept any write up which does not ensure the plagiarism check. Such progressive solutions in the education sector will produce successful degree holders and improve digitized economies.

The writer is a professor of English at Government Emerson College, Multan. He can be reached at zeadogar@hotmail.com and Tweets at @Profzee