Summary
The COVID-19 epidemic is a major challenge to education systems. This vision provides guidance for teachers, heads of institutions, and officials in dealing with this problem. What arrangements should institutions make in the shortest time available and how do they address the needs of students at the level and field of study? Ensuring students and parents is an important institutional response. To increase the capacity of remote teaching, schools and colleges should take advantage of the convenient, efficient way of digital formats. As well as general classroom lessons, teaching should include a variety of assignments and work that puts COVID-19 in a global context and history. When designing curricula, designing learners' tests first helps teachers to focus. Finally, this Vision proposes flexible ways to repair damage to student learning pathways after the epidemic is over and provide a list of resources.
Keywords: curriculum, learning, teaching, assessment, COVID-19, epidemic, problem
Over the past 50 years there has been significant growth worldwide in the provision of education at all levels. COVID-19 is the biggest challenge these extended national education programs have ever faced. Many governments have instructed institutions to stop teaching face-to-face with most of their students, requiring them to switch, almost all night, to online teaching and practical education. This short paper provides basic guidance for teachers, heads of institutions and government officials who should manage the educational outcomes of this crisis. It speaks:
Arrangements can be made by the systems
The needs of students at different levels and levels
Reassuring students and parents
Easy ways to learn remotely
Lessons
Testing
After COVID-19
Useful resources.
Arrangements
Many governments were playing games with COVID-19, so institutions had very little time to prepare for the state of remote teaching. Where possible, arrangements could include:
Ensuring that students take home books, etc., needed for home reading.
Integrating open boundaries; e.g., to complete test results and reports. In the northern part of the country, many teachers are in the process of predicting the marks for end-of-year exams for admission and application to higher education. Depending on whether or not they do so before or during the formal testing of these tests, teachers' predictions may have been distorted, causing concern for themselves and their students.
Staff preparation and training: safety arrangements; division of labor between departments; teachers' ways of communicating to help each other; and short and simple updates to some of the most common learning technologies. Many institutions have plans to make greater use of technology in teaching, but the outbreak of COVID-19 means that changes aimed at months or years must be made within a few days.
Different students, different needs
The COVID-19 epidemic has affected students' lives in a variety of ways, depending not only on their level and learning style but also on the level at which they have achieved their programs. Those who reach the end of one phase of their education and then move on to another, such as transition from school to tertiary education, or from higher education to work, face a number of challenges. They will not be able to complete their curriculum and assessment in the normal way and, in most cases, be excluded from their community group almost all night. Students who make the transition to higher education by the end of this year are less likely to take special examinations (e.g., International Baccalaureate) at the next level.
Even those who are part of their programs will be anxious until they have clear indications of how they will be reinstated in their studies and their testing programs after the crisis. Many in the COVID-19 student group will worry about long-term suffering, compared to those who have studied “normal”, as they move on to another level of education or enter the labor market. Statements from tertiary institutions that use “compassionate” acceptance methods may not always reassure us.
Although distance learning methods will differ significantly between primary and tertiary education, the requirements for the technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) programs require special attention. Graduates in these programs will play an important role in economic recovery. Providing the practical training they need by studying grades is possible but requires special preparation. The Commonwealth of Learning is the term used by TVET in developing countries.
Reassuring students and parents
These are troubling times for students and parents. Uncertainty about when life will be “restored to normal” includes anxiety. Although institutions are making the necessary changes to teach in a variety of ways, all should be at the forefront of reassuring students and parents — through targeted communication. Many teachers and counselors will be required to provide this confirmation without explicit information from assessment bodies and institutions regarding arrangements to change canceled exams and to change admission procedures. Institutions should sensitize students and parents by regularly communicating on these issues. Teachers and school counselors may be better than parents at burdening students with stressful situations. All, however, can reach out to helpline and resources outside of a special school program to deal with emotional and psychological challenges.Over the past 50 years, various authorities have established “open” universities with the aim of measuring opportunities by expanding access to higher education through higher education. Sadly, the current need to continue learning by switching to distance learning can have a different effect. Educational institutions and programs must make special efforts to assist those students whose parents do not support them and whose home environment is not conducive to study. When homes are closed in their homes by COVID-19, parents and guardians can be very anxious about their economic future, so studying at home is not easy, especially for low-income children. Such households are often devoid of equipment and communications taken away by wealthy families, exacerbating the problem.
Simple methods for long teaching: Use uncomplicated reading
Just as institutions take steps to inform, reassure and maintain communication with students and parents, they should also increase their ability to teach remotely. This emergency is not the time to make complex institutional plans for grades that should have taken months or years. The art of "if a job has to be done, it has to be done badly" is valid. Teachers should work with those who can. Fully paying attention to affirmative students is more important than trying to learn new teaching methods or technologies in flight.
The most important correction, for those who are used to teaching in the classroom in real time, is to take advantage of the uncomplicated learning. In most learning and teaching situations, participants do not have to communicate at the same time. Asynchronous practice gives teachers flexibility when preparing material and empowers students to meet home and academic needs. Asynchronous learning works well in digital formats. Teachers do not need to deliver resources on time: they can be posted online to get the desired access and students can engage with them using wikis, blogs, and email to suit their schedules. Teachers can monitor student participation from time to time and make online appointments for students with specific needs or questions. Building a small digital classroom gives teachers and students more space to breathe.
Similarly, video lessons are often more effective - and easier to prepare - if they are short (5‒10 minutes). Organizations offering major online courses, such as FutureLearn, have developed distance learning methods that measure accessibility and effectiveness. Anyone who has been asked to teach remotely can enter the FutureLearn course in their topic area to see the use of short videos. Teachers may also wish to mark appropriate lessons online for their students.
Lessons
What curriculum should teachers use in distance learning during the COVID-19 disaster? The answer will vary greatly. Some have set national curriculum courses, while others provide teachers with a broader understanding of program content. Typical tips for teachers to keep two purposes in mind. While it is important to continue to guide students 'learning in the classroom curriculum and the tests / tests they have prepared, it is also important to keep students' interest in learning by giving them a variety of assignments - at least, perhaps, with work that poses the current COVID-19 problem. Some schools encourage students to deal with this problem by preparing food and supplies for the families at risk or by writing to elderly residents in nursing homes.
With such advice, teachers can use the vast amount of high-quality learning materials now available as widely used resources for open education. The OpenLearn website, for example, contains more than 1,000 courses at both school and tertiary levels. There is no shame in teaching good things for others.
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