As the author and e-learning researcher Donna J. Abernathy once said, “Online learning is not the next big thing, it is the new big thing.” Looking at the statistics proves the truth behind Abernathy’s words.
Since 2020, almost 98% of the universities have upgraded to online learning thanks to the global COVID-19 pandemic. As one country after another entered into a total lockdown, the citizens saw their governments try to downplay the impact of the virus. However, as the death toll refuses to go down, every country immediately shut down schools, colleges and universities to contain the spread of the virus.
An Unexpected Challenge To Battle
It’s not every day that the entire education system gets dismantled by one invisible virus that threatens to devastate the whole nation’s economy and fundamental structure. Though entirely unprepared to deal with such a sudden situation, academic institutions worldwide scrambled to adopt online learning as an alternative to shutting down institutions indefinitely.
According to UNICEF, schools for more than 168 million students worldwide have been closed for almost an entire academic year. This highlights the growing disparity among certain countries regarding their ability to improvise with the facilities available.
As of 19th November 2021, there have been 255,324,963 confirmed COVID-19 positive cases globally, with the USA leading the number of confirmed cases with 95,549,241. However, at the beginning of 2020, Asian countries like China, India and Hong Kong experienced a massive surge of positive cases due to the extensive population. Therefore, they had to shut down all educational institutions at once. With the hopes that the situation would stabilise soon enough, education policymakers, professors, teachers, and students waited for months.
Yet, the rising death toll was the only indicator of the reality of the situation slowly. Within a few weeks, all parts of the world closed its doors to the students and sent them packing home while incorporating the e-learning methodology.
The Growing Disparity Amongst Students
2020 saw millions of students worldwide left stranded and asked to vacate the educational institution premises. While some welcomed the change, researchers noticed a growing disparity among students worldwide.
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Lack of access to e-learning
After the initial months of complete lockdown, schools and universities adopted the online learning formula to ensure students don’t lose an academic year to COVID-19. Unfortunately, this option is not the most inclusive one as it discriminates against those with no access to the appropriate gadgets or a high-speed internet connection.
Students in developing countries struggled the most with this sudden change. The lack of infrastructure to support online learning was the biggest obstacle in the way of higher education.
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The uncertainty of the situation
This unexpected situation left students, who had already received their acceptances in foreign universities, in a lurch. With air travel shutting down and the government forcing millions of students to return to their native countries, the uncertainty of what the future holds put immense stress on international students.
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The growing economic crisis
COVID-19 is single-handedly responsible for the loss of approximately 81 million jobs. In this turbulent situation, students from low-income households cannot overspend to access the necessary equipment to attend online classes. In addition, the lack of a mobile phone, laptop, and good internet connection made it impossible to participate in classes and caused hundreds of students to fall behind their peers.
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The lack of expertise from universities
Online learning was never a priority before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. As a result, most colleges and universities could not handle the sudden shift to an entirely unfamiliar learning mode. Additionally, students expressed their dissatisfaction with having to pay the steep tuition fees for online classes. In fact, more than 200,000 students in the UK signed a petition demanding refunds for the expensive courses as they had never agreed to online learning.
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Inability of teachers to cope
Similar to the students, the teachers too were faced with an entirely new scenario. Teaching in the online mode is significantly different from face-to-face learning. As a result, professors unfamiliar with technology have to learn the ropes of handling online classes and developing lesson plans to complement the new learning mode. Unfortunately, most professors failed to address several issues, leading students to hire essay writing help services from and similar websites.
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Assessment troubles
As the offline mode of examinations gave way to online evaluations, institutions struggled to maintain the authenticity of the tests. Furthermore, as students began using unfair means in their exams, universities used advanced AI to track a student’s movements during examinations and college assignment help.
What Does The Future Hold For Higher Education?
Change is never easy. But sometimes, it is a necessity. As Deepak Chopra once said, “All great changes are preceded by chaos.” Online learning has been in the works for a long time. In fact, you can trace back its origins to 1960 in the University of Illinois, USA, where students began learning from computer terminals interlinked to form a network.
Online education has come a long way, with distance education gaining popularity among working individuals pre-pandemic. But, with the COVID-19 acting as a catalyst, 2020 saw a significant shift in the demand for online learning in higher education.
Thankfully, due to the mass vaccination drives in various countries, many educational institutions have been able to open their door to students once again. However, most universities are still hesitant to go back to how things were before. Hence, they have adopted a hybrid model of learning.
While financial struggles have forced many institutions to close their doors forever, most have managed to tide through the turbulent times. However, as the situation seems to be on the mend, there’s no denying that the COVID-19 pandemic has opened everyone’s eyes to the weaknesses in the higher education sector that policymakers need to address. Hopefully, as the situation worldwide stabilises, the government and education department will address the growing disparity in education and introduce policies for better learning.
