On January 1st of 1964, the great Nigerian activist Pa Tai Solarin wrote a column in the Daily Times Newspaper titled “May your days be rough” in which he wrote in quote “You cannot make omelettes without breaking eggs, throughout the world, there is no paean without pain.” The outbreak of the covid19 pandemic has remained a driving force that has helped to redefine our educational sector. From Pa Tai Solarin’s words, it can be deduced that tough moments are factors that have helped to determine our approach to finding solutions to challenges, and they are redefining moments in achieving great results.
Today, the world is faced with the outbreak of the covid19 pandemic while more than seven million people are being globally affected; more than 400 thousand deaths are being recorded around the world based on the World Health Organization (WHO) situation report of June 12, 2020. The educational sector was spared neither, leading to the lockdown of schools around the globe while in Nigeria as at present the schools are yet to be reopened. Major economies of the world are on the verge of collapse due to border closure, increased death rate and the non-movement of goods and services from one country to another, bringing about a reduction in productivity coupled with high level of unemployment rate. Like in the words of Prof. Chinua Achebe, “the world is no longer at ease.”
The Nigerian educational system which operates mostly on the traditional approach to teaching and learning needs quick and effective reformation. It is a sorry state that most of the students are at home, most of whom have taken to acquire some vocational skills while some are idle and less engaged with academic activities, some of the teachers are not spared too; lack of innovativeness, absence of computer self-efficacy, and deficiencies in the use of education enabled technological tools are factors that needed to be checked in order for an improved and creative teaching and learning environment to take place offline or online. The future of education post covid19 pandemic should be based on making the educational sector more competitive and creative so as not to deprive the students the opportunity to compete with their counterparts in developed countries of the world.
In my conversations with some students in regards to how effective they have been spending their time and taking advantage of the covid19 pandemic, to my amazement they have not been really engaged and some cannot even recollect some of the things they were taught in school before the forced holiday. My investigation revealed that student in public owned schools are not exposed to the use of technology and they are oblivious of what is going on around them on the internet despite that some of them have data enabled mobile phones. They know nothing of online education and they are not aware that they can earn certificates online, learn new skills and even earn money online from the comfort of their homes. Some public school teachers also fall into this category based on my findings as most of the teachers cannot even operate a computer and have never used a spreadsheet application before compared to their counterparts in private schools.
On May 16th of 2020, I decided to organize an online class for public school teachers on the use of virtual classroom technology to aid teaching and learning remotely, the turnout was not encouraging that the seminar could not hold despite that a meagre fee was attached to the training, some do not have a personal computer or an android enabled device to be able to be a part of the seminar. The truth is that education has gone beyond the physical classroom and this is what developed countries are taking advantage of in recent times to engage the population of students at home. It is a sorry state in Nigeria currently due to the fact that majority of the teachers we have in our schools are not technology savvy.
The World Bank recently as at 11th of June, 2020 on its website discussed how countries are using ‘Edtech’ to support access to remote learning during the covid19 pandemic, while various countries are being mentioned and the steps they have taken to ensure that the students continue to benefit through the virtual classroom put in place by their governments. Countries like Afghanistan through its Directorate of Technical and Vocational Education was able to develop a guideline which it calls “Alternative Education Scheme for Persistence of ‘Corona Virus’ in the country. The adoption of audio visuals were being put in place to keep the students engaged in their respective homes. Argentina came up with what it refers to as “Educ.ar” through its Ministry of Education to provide digital resources to teachers and students and this according to the WorldBank started on April 1, 2020. Austria through its education ministry adopted the use of “Moodle and LMS” which were designed by Microsoft and Google while the Ministry on its own designed a portal called “Eduthek” to cater for kindergarten and other school levels. The same thing is applicable to Brazil, Bulgaria, China, Colombia, Chile, China, USA, UK, Netherland and others who have taken due advantage of their technological expertise in creating virtual classrooms to engage their students.
Also, the Nigerian government according to the World Bank report had setup a task force to create what it referred to as the ‘Learn at Home Programme” to provide digital and online resources to aid students preparing for WAEC and also, a deal was reached with “Mobile Classroom App” to help design a mobile app to aid teaching and learning via the mobile phone. These are great innovations springing up this covid19 period one which was never in the know in previous years as we have mostly relied on the traditional system of teaching and learning, and now we have started to grapple with the realities of the pandemic, while also making use of the technology at our disposal to cater for the needs of the millions of students at home this period.
Despite these innovations, the most functional of these ideas to cater for remote learning are that of radio and television educational programmes in Nigeria, while that of mobile app, web applications and software have not been effective due to reasons like, lack of efficient and effective use of computer software and hardware on the part of teachers and students, lack of innovativeness on the part of the teachers, lack of training and seminars beyond the shores of the country and even online real time, cost associated with initiating online classroom, high cost of data subscription, lack of support from the telecoms industry, absence of innovativeness on the part of the government, unflinching attitude of parents to online learning, lack of exposure on the parts of teachers and students, absence of free public wifi enabled devices for public school usage, coupled with epileptic power supply in the country etc.
We should not forget that the private schools have been taking drastic steps to redefine the educational system by creatively engaging their students at home. While public school students are yet to take advantage of the recent developments, it has been an ache in the tooth for many including the public school teachers some of whom have never heard of Microsoft word not to talk about Microsoft teams application, Zoom, Google classroom, Moodle, Edx, Udemy and Allison all of which are great brands serving as auxiliaries for the educational sector. Recently, mindspark in collaboration with IBM conducted a virtual class to aid educators, also Edutech conducted an online seminar on virtual classroom infusion for all educators around the globe and others like Microsoft and Google with most public school teachers oblivious of these great training avenues readily available. To aid teachers in being up to the task, Springer publishing company made available most of their books to be downloaded for free. This no doubt is the future of education around the world one which we in Nigeria here must also take advantage of in order to be able to compete favourably with our counterparts in developed countries.
For us to be able to ensure success of the educational sector in Nigeria, the future ahead lies on innovative teachers who have the technological skills in using hardware and software educational tools for teaching and learning, the students need to be exposed and the government also needs to be able to make provisions for easy access to the internet at low or no cost. Also, there must exist a synergy among technology experts and those who are responsible for the administration of education in Nigeria which is quite essential for continued growth and development of the educational sector. The future of education post covid19 is a redefinition of the traditional classroom approach to a virtually enabled classroom coupled with the acquisition of information technology skills on the part of the teachers and the administrators.