Daily Times

The current educational policies at national and provincial levels have a little room for Edtech and alternative learning pathways, therefore, advanced learning methods must be adopted through similar research initiatives to compete the advanced world.

Bella Raza Jamil, the Chief Executive Officer of Idara-e-Taleem-o-Agahi while speaking at a seminar on ‘Investigating the Impact on Learning Outcomes Through the Use of EdTech During COVID-19’ said on Saturday.

Evidence from an RCT in the Punjab Province of Pakistan ‘organized by Sustainable Development Policy Institute(SDPI) at a local hotel. In her special remarks, Bella Jamil stressed the need to explore more pathways of accelerated learning through edtech and address the issues of financing and costing in different age groups.

Dr Nasir Mehmood, Dean of Faculty of Education, Allama Iqbal Open University, said that students have the experience of immense learning losses, which must be addressed. He emphasized the need for a forum where research findings on edtech can be consolidated to prevent the loss of information. “We need to improve enrollment in terms of gender parity and also find authentic data on it, as there is a lot of contradictory research on this subject,” he added.

Susan Nicolai, Research Director of EdTech Hub, said that technology has the potential to solve the global learning crisis, which is under-realized and is caused by gaps in evidence and gaps in the use of evidence. She said that 9 out of 10 children in low-income countries are disadvantaged in terms of literacy and numeracy, which has been intensified due to school closures during COVID-19 pandemic. She said that the systematic use of technology for educational purposes is limited by schools and students despite its widespread use and expansion in mobiles. She informed the audience that the edtech sector is predicted to reach worth US$ 404 billion, and the world governments, including Pakistan, has shown keen interest in promoting the sector but no structured plans for preferred edtech technologies have been devised so far. She further said that research in five low-income countries exposed gender-based inequality in edtech access and use but female students demonstrated higher utility and benefit upon access. She added that teachers found innovative ways to use edtech, but it is most effective when aligned with curricula and is oriented around the community of learners, and those involved in this process. She emphasized to build culture of evidence-based decision-making to address the global learning crisis.

Dr Fareeha Armughan, SDPI Research Fellow, said community perception of technology must be factored in the planning of any edtech programme. Referring to the SDPI study, she said that 90% students have access to television, but only 43% use it for education. Parents’ perception about its utility for educational purposes is negligible, she said. She pointed out that low-income groups surveyed in the Punjab for this research are not well-versed in technology.

Dr Rabia Nazir, Co-author or the study, expressed that replacing the current education approach with teaching at the right level might not remedy the learning crisis, but embedding it into the system will be much effective. She also said that understanding the socio-economic profile of the community is crucial to implement an effective choice of technology.

Dr Sajid Amin, SDPI Deputy Executive Director, said that it will be a useful addition to the existing research to have synthesis on evidence on the role of edtech. He stressed the need for synthesis on evidence on how peer countries as well as our region is using edtech and what practices are required to make research more practical and applicable. He suggested that in order to promote the educational use of technology, mobile network companies should provide concessional data bundles for WhatsApp and other applications widely used for educational content to increase accessibility for low-income students.