International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS) |Volume VI, Issue XI, November 2022|ISSN 2454-6186
Preparedness in Online Teaching and Learning
Christine M.Kahigi
Department of Educational Foundations, Arts and Social Studies
Faculty of Education, University of Nairobi, Kenya
Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic has created the largest disruption of education systems in human history, affecting nearly 1.6 billion learners in more than 200 countries. Closures of schools, no, and other learning spaces have impacted more than 94% of the world’s student population. This situation challenged the education system across the world and forced educators to shift to the online mode of teaching overnight. Many academic institutions that were earlier reluctant to change their traditional pedagogical approach had no option but to shift entirely to online teaching-learning and assessment. The paper discusses the importance of online learning not just in times of crisis, but the need of the hour to innovate and implement online teaching as an alternative educational system. The lesson learned from the COVID-19 pandemic is that teachers and students/learners should be oriented on the use of different online educational tools. By looking at the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, & Challenges of e-learning modes, the importance and areas of preparedness have also been discussed.
I. INTRODUCTION
The fast advances in technology in the past few years are an indication that the time for updating the mode of education delivery is overdue. Updating education systems to be able to learn at any time, and any place was on its way to being achieved (Wolfinger, 2016). Natural disasters such as floods, earthquakes, and storms are known to have wreaked havoc on human institutions, including education in terms of damage to infrastructure. However, the onset of COVID-19 brought almost all human activities to a standstill but teaching and learning in some countries resumed faster than other industries as the sector managed to transfer to online.
Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, online learning had been activated in some global institutes for the past two decades but was not adopted with enthusiasm and the majority of the teaching staff did not know what is involved in e-learning. This was particularly so in developing countries, and more so in Africa. As a result, when Covid-19 broke out, there were many challenges due to poor infrastructure to support the new mode of teaching, inadequate capacity of the teachers, and poor or lack of internet connectivity in some parts of the countries which disadvantaged some learners who could not be reached. Studies show that many countries in Africa attempted to train the staff and teach at the same time demonstrating a lot of resilience. There were advantages to switching to online learning and teaching as well as disadvantages both discussed in this paper, with the former outweighing the latter. Lessons learned in the endeavors point to the need for more effort to prepare for digital learning and teaching as the future of education, not only in Africa but the world over.