COVID 19 and ONLINE LEARNING – My Perspective
Over six lakhs (6,10.902) students of classes I to VIII will return to schools in Coimbatore District on November 01, 2021 after a gap of 18 months due to COVID 19 pandemic, says the Department of School Education (The Hindu 01/10/2021).
All these days children were attending online schooling for 18 months which would have thrown up many learning gaps among the students, especially the younger ones. Teachers and parents would have seen more students with learning challenges along with psychological issues like social connectivity.
This situation of online learning has left children in Primary and middle school level with learning gaps in reading, writing and arithmetic along with poor study skills and time management.
Educational Psychologists says, the effect of this learning gaps will continue if not addressed at the right time. Students with these issues show poor performance in academic as well as other developmental areas with poor or low age appropriate skills. A class 8 student with learning gaps, when assessed today, will have the knowledge of only class 5 student. A class 5 student with learning gaps will show the knowledge of class 3 student and a class 3 student with a learning gap will show a delay for another 3 years and will end up with knowledge of a LKG student.
But parents are not aware of
this and are busy taking notes, photos, screen shots and submitting assignments
and homeworks of children and thinking that the work is done and their children
are learning.
Further, in an online class the receptive skills like listening and reading is not at all happening. Children are very much distracted with the crowded learning screen and no chance for them to read. They dd not self-reading even after the sessions and this leads to poor reading and which turn leads to lack of comprehension skills in students. Teachers might have faced problems like, they cannot pay individual attention to students as there were 40 children in a session and their screens were crowded, which left many children unattended.
Children are more dependent on parents for all their assignments and homeworks and even for attending their classes on time. She/he needs external support from parents, friends, grandparents and tuition teacher. If this condition prevails, the student will be in look out for help each time and later will be prone to labelling by the teachers, parents and friends and finally will end up as a child not willing to go to school.
The government as well as the stake holders of schools, parents and teachers are recommended to identify the learning gaps of children at an early stage and remedial education should be imparted to the vulnerable children. If the child above 05 years is struggling to identify a letter and unable to blend the worlds, read it out and comprehend independently and lacks number sense, shows reversal of letters and numbers in writing and lack of interest in studies are the early signs and red flags of the effects of learning gaps which ends up in Specific Learning Disabilities.
Educational implications like programmed learning method in which, learning contents can be presented to students in a graded sequence of controlled steps, based on individual differences, students involvement and immediate feedback.
Remedial education support which is more child centric with its one on one sessions, concept teaching, therapy, brain simulation activities and NIOS (National Institute of Open Schooling) curriculum will help children with such diverse learning needs.
This is a serious issue which our school going children are facing today and if these learning gaps are left unaddressed it may lead to learning disability and finally children end up with some excuses for not attending schools and become school dropouts at a very young age.
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