I can sometimes hear the wailing from my window, and although it is, in Arabic I just know, a student crying out, “Mum, the Internet’s not working!”
Oman’s Internet service providers face a challenge of innumerable proportion has as tens of thousands of student households, and hundreds, maybe thousands of teachers and lecturers seek to get Internet packages which will allow them to participate in e-learning, all across the country. Maybe students could do sufficient research for homework assignments on their mobile phones, but the learning landscape has now altered so much.
The greatest challenge of course, is that this was never going to happen. Students
may be kept at home due to a flooded wadi, or a storm, but by what’s essentially
a sophisticated form of ‘flu,’ nah, never gonna happen, but it has! And because it
was never going to happen, the support structures, resources, knowledge, and
skills development in the area of e-learning were never put in place. One could offer
the analogy that when you go on a flight somewhere you always get a flight safety
briefing, and there are instruction cards, so that even though you may never need
it, you can evacuate your plane in an emergency, in a flash! Here there was
nothing!
Again, it’s not anyone’s particular fault, although the wise among us had looked
at what the West is doing in terms of both classroom and e-earning and thought,
“That’s good,” or “Wow, what I couldn’t do with that.” And especially in e-learning,
new formats and systems are trotted out at every educational conference. We
were certainly told we could not afford it, and deep down there was probably
too a recognition that our students are still coming to grips with collaborative
learning, academic language, and the generic demands of higher education.
Certainly, we have made strides in enquiry and discovery learning, but we aren’t
‘there’ yet.
Universities and colleges have been rushing around, trying to redesign courses and assessment that will be appropriate to the learning objectives of their courses.
This, all with varying degrees of need, capability, and success, because they
were all in ‘different places.’ When this started. However, the handwringing and
angst must stop now, and each sector/ stakeholder must work with what we’ve
got.
Institutions should really stop trying to improve and develop courses now,
and work with what they have. If they think this situation has been traumatic for
them, they should consider the teachers, parents and students. There is a level of
pragmatism throughout the academics here that while what they have isn’t what
they want, they will make it work. Just now, trust them, and leave them to get on
with it.
Teachers and lecturers are in a cleft stick somewhat, as few will have experience of e-learning, while those who do understanding the altered dynamics and methodologies are probably worn out from trying to ‘upskill’ a hundred
colleagues. You can only do what you can do guys and girls! It would be a poor employer who could not support and encourage you throughout this time. Trust
them to ‘do the right thing.’
As for you students, rather than being traumatised and ‘caught in the headlights,’
by all that has occurred socially and educationally, look upon the eLearning
and assessment as an opportunity to show how good you are, how strong, how
resilient, how effective, and how grown-up and mature, in an academic sense, you can be about all that is ‘going on.’ You could cry like a baby, think the world is against you, go “oh woe is me,” from daylight till dusk, and plead that Ramadan could not have come at a worse time.
Or you can embrace the many challenges you face. You can grow up and
‘play with the big kids,’ so to speak, and ‘walk the walk’ instead of ‘talking the talk.’
Assert yourself as a mature, articulate, resilient young adult. Ask questions,
research answers, and give thoughtful responses. See yourself through your
teacher’s eyes and ask yourself, am I that person? I’m sure you are.
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