Daniel Frimpong – IDCE President on E-learning

In The Midst of World Economic Distress And Growing Rate of Deadly Pandemic, How Feasible Is Education?

The World in few months now has being in distress with alarming increasing rate of deadly pandemic; Coronavirus (COVID-19) with unappreciable death toll hitting more than one hundred and ninety-nine (199) countries, territories and provinces; including our little nation – Ghana.

Lives have darely being affected from social, economic, religion, and educational jurisdictions leaving even so-called ‘developed economics’ crying for help as had been witnessed globally.

As the end of this deadly pandemic is yet to be ascertain with full evidence of possible future hike in infected cases, one question has been a butter and bread on my table – Must everything in the world comes to an end whiles we seek for solutions for COVID-19?

Must healthcare facilities be closed down? Must the judicial system be closed down? Must religious institutions be closed down? Must projects be halted? Must supply to basic social amenities be halted? I believe your answer is as good as mine; Absolutely no!

World leaders have through their contingency management styles, rolled out initiatives which seek to partially keep the world running, and our nation Ghana is of no exception. One of the sectors which was affected with this new initiatives is the education sector which was directed by H. E. Nana Addo Danquah – Akuffo Addo, the President of the Republic of Ghana on the 15th of March, 2020 for the Ministry of Education “to close down all public and private schools and roll out distance learning programmes” for the interim.

Kumasi Technical University (KsTU) as one of the public technical universities was also part of the directives to “roll out distance learning programmes” and management of KsTU on that note; has taken stringent measures to roll out e-learning as directed by the first gentleman of the land.

I have observed keenly with concern, fist objection by students with this new initiative without taking into consideration what e-learning is all about, how the academic calendar is going to be exhausted and how soon the COVID-19 pandemic is going to elapsed. Students concerns have fairly been staged around inability of some students purchasing smartphones/laptops, poor internet connection, students living in remote areas among others.

These concerns are genuine with evidence to support the claims, but have we consider its potential advantages?

• That through e-learning, the academic calendar can be exhausted without affecting next academic calendar?
• That students may be dumb staying idle in their respective homes?
• That should the nation not produce any graduates for the 2019/20 academic year?
• That as the world moves to more technological in their operation, should ‘technical universities’ be left to operate in the traditional way because students are not well equipped in ICT?

I do not think these disadvantages torpedo the advantages as listed above.

What I seek from all students is rather to focus on how to overcome these challenges and find out what really e-learning is about………

…..To be continued…….

©️2020 – All rights reserved

FRIMPONG DANIEL

A student of KsTU