Novel education trends and practices with the covid-19 pandemic situation

 

Novel education trends and practices with the covid-19 pandemic situation

With the spread of Covid-19, the whole world had to stand still. It is an unexpected situation that came to the world, affecting every sector in almost all countries. But with the rise and advancement of technology, many challenges that come into place have been maintained to a certain extent with the huge support of digitalization and innovation. 

When the virus came into the world, all places had to shut down; shops, schools, offices and universities to avoid the spread and make people safe from the virus. Then onwards, people had to be at their homes and do their businesses, office work and studies from home. We had to explore and adapt to the new concept of the New Normal; which now we practice the best converting all to work from home, distance learning, social media marketing and so on with the huge support of digitalization and globalization. But we couldn’t adapt at once, had to go through many obstacles; which middle- and low-income countries took some time to inherit from their countries. Those are economic, social, educational, psychological and technological barriers but all together they are interconnected as we live in an interdependent and high-networking world.

When it comes to the Educational sector, it is the main and important sector that has been affected the most because Covid 19 and the pandemic situation, which is also affecting not only children but also teen students, teachers, undergraduates, academic staff and educational institutions as a whole. We are living amidst what is potentially one of the greatest threats in our lifetime to global education, a gigantic educational crisis. We were already experiencing a global learning crisis, as many students were in school, but were not learning the fundamental skills needed for life – before the outbreak started. This pandemic has the potential to worsen these outcomes even more if we do not act fast.

Being thankful to the IT sector, we could transform our classrooms and lecture halls into Google classrooms, Zoom learning and Microsoft Teams platforms. The teachers and students both had to learn about those platforms and how to manage them, which was a novel experience for some. But gradually they learned how to use them effectively to interact with the students more informally. Teachers and lecturers always try to make distance learning more interesting because the students feel isolated by not being together with their friends. For instance, in universities, the lecturers try to engage with the students by giving students group work, timed and challenging tasks, etc. combining with digital media tools such as social media, YouTube videos, quizzes, etc. to retain attention and interest in studies among students, which is a very hard thing to do.

As it is said that every rose has its thorn, we also can see a gray area of this online learning over its rise and benefits. Losses in learning, increased dropout rates, children missing their most important meal of the day, connectivity issues and unbearable data expenses are some of the challenges that students and teachers are facing because of online learning. Moreover, most countries have very unequal education systems, and these negative impacts will be felt disproportionately by poor children. 

However, in the modern digitalized world, we need to change the activities to align with the post-pandemic education system toward achieving sustainability. Therefore, we need to identify and adapt to the situation while promoting some characteristics which we need to promote in the modern world. Collaborative classrooms, improving life skills for workplace preparation and student-led learning are some of the needed qualities to get along with the novel trends in education. Even though Education Psychology requires student-centered learning and interactive classrooms to promote self-development, now only it has come to place with the influence of pandemic situations where social distance is also in place at the moment. And I believe that, allowing students to work on self-paced learning while encouraging students to practice their creativity and independent thinking skills will also lead to developing their love of learning, it being an excellent educational method practiced as a trend.

I have discussed many global trends which are practiced in the world such as self-care, blended learning, social-emotional learning and experiential learning with practicable aspects. Diversity, practice-based work, teamwork, collaboration, professional development, self-learning, thinking out-of-the-box and flexibility are much needed to align with the novel and modern educational environment and when we are stepping towards the corporate world. Therefore, it is both students’ and teachers’ duty to identify, create and get into such by reading, researching and exploring how to teach and how to learn to gain and share the benefits from the novelties in the educational sector gained as solutions to the pandemic situation.