COVID-19 brought with it some major life alternation impacts, not only the social interaction but businesses, gatherings, and even academic institutions faced shutdowns for a longer time period and no hope to reopen any sooner. This leads the world to undergo an educational crisis since the extensive lockdowns have made more than 77 million children to miss school for almost eighteen months now which becomes approximately 2 trillion hours without any learning (UNICEF, n.d.)
Even though the world did shift from person to online, so did the schooling systems i.e., all academic institutions around the globe shifted to e-learning from in-person face to face classes to insure the standard operating procedures set by the World Health Organization (WHO). However, it should not be forgotten that it’s one of the basic rights of children to go to schools for their better understanding, development, and welfare. Nonetheless, it is seen that the pandemic, after the introduction of vaccines, have come somewhat under control and strict precautionary measures are being lifted. Therefore, in a number of countries, social gatherings, parties, restaurants, salons, and gyms have resumed whereas, academic institutions still suffer a closure with no expected opening in the near future.
Although the decision to shut the academic intuitions was not entirely wrong since it is difficult to make the children follow all the rules and standard operating procedures throughout the day and there is a fair chance of them getting irritated easily thus, shutting the schools was a rational decision in the beginning. (Mahyoob, 2020)
In a holistic view, COVID-19 has been destroyed so far for every field but academic institutions taken in particular have suffered greatly especially in the countries where technology is not very famous. The children, parents, and teachers as well found it difficult to conduct online classes as the methods were entirely alien to everyone. From delivering a lecture to conducting exams everything got disturbed and imbalanced due to COVID-19 and both the children and teachers had to crawl out of their comfort zones and adapt to the new way of learning which didn’t spare the parents since convincing the children and making them habitual of something that they themselves never did has been a weighty task.
WHAT CHALLENGES DID ONLINE CLASSES BRING?
As it has been discussed above how online classes or e-learning has been disruptive, there has been another great obstacle that no other students and teachers have faced i.e., online submission. Remote conduction of assessments and assignments have been quite unmanageable. There was huge traffic witnessed on the best assignment services portals since everyone wanted the result quickly in no time. Still, there were issues due to no proper guidelines available for the institutions. (Guangul, 2020)
With no proper strategies provided a question remains what to teach, how to teach, what should be the duties of the students and the teachers, how much work should be assigned to the students, what should be deadlines and submission policies on that.
A great number of academic institutions faced numerous problems when it came to the submission of assessment papers and assignments. There are a number of reasons that impacted the submission in so many countries, some of them are;
Electricity issues: A lot many countries still undergo a shortage of electricity due to which a significant amount of work loss is experienced every year and non-submission of assignment is just one of them. A lot of many students after writing their thesis, dissertations, and reports couldn’t submit the paperwork due to no power.
Internet Issues: Other most important factor for e-learning after electricity is the internet. The shortage of internet is worst particularly in the developing countries where people are still struggling for basic needs of food, clothing, and shelter, having the internet is something luxurious. Therefore, without the internet, it becomes impossible for the students to make submissions even though they have written, composed, and compiled them. (STEPS, n.d.)
Non-availability of resources: Even if the government resolves the issue of electricity and the internet there is one more obstacle especially in the developing countries where the netizens suffer greatly and it is the shortage of resources like electronic gadgets to have the classes on. Therefore, this remains another hurdle in between online education, online assessment, and online submissions.
Lack of familiarity and discipline: Online classes made a drastic change in children’s daily routine where everything was scheduled and was on time however, during the extensive lockdowns and a lot of free time hands, children became non-serious towards their studies and forgot all the timely scheduled arrangements which became one of the issues in e-learning.
Summary
To terse, while e-learning or online classes were somewhat necessary to save the kids from a deadly and contagious virus that spread around the globe rapidly and continues to spread with an even greater speed killing hundreds and thousands of people, it is also necessary to start resuming the schools. For my online criminology assignment help, I conducted a survey through which I got to the dramatic increase in the number of cybercrimes that included theft of school assignments, dissertations, and final reports of students without their consent.
The reason for an increased number of cybercrimes involving kids is due to the lack of discipline and a lot of time in hands, no supervision over the kids that where they are writing the papers from, where they are getting the content from. All of these things add up and result in crimes like theft of thesis which is a serious crime. That is why United Nations International Children’s Emergency Funds (UNICEF) urges in their recent report that it is high time now that academic institutions should reopen and resume as soon as possible since it is not only the studies that are at stake but the children’s mental health is also deteriorating.
Thus, it becomes imperative for the governments to make vaccinations mandatory so that half of the risk is eliminated. For the other half, parents, teachers, and children themselves have to get together since it is a fight between us and the virus that at no cost, we should let the virus win.
References
Guangul, F. M. (2020). Challenges of remote assessment in higher education in the context of COVID-19: a case study of Middle East College. Springer Link.
Mahyoob, M. (2020). Challenges of e-Learning during the COVID-19 Pandemic Experienced by EFL Learners. Saudi Arabia : Arab World English Journal .
STEPS. (n.d.). Overcoming the Challenges of Online Learning During COVID-19. Retrieved from Students Training and Education in Public Services: https://www.publicservicedegrees.org/resources/online-learning-during-covid/
UNICEF. (n.d.). Reopen schools ASAP . Retrieved from UNICEF.ORG: https://www.unicef.org/coronavirus/reopen-schools?gclid=CjwKCAiAtouOBhA6EiwA2nLKH0MWuL9Z6BeDG9CLL25uN5Xq2-KWtywYZdDe2CwgV0Q94cCrrRqMrxoCc3AQAvD_BwE
