Students in Online Classes

Problems and Solutions in the Perspective of Bangladesh

Introduction

An online class is a class or course conducted through a digital learning management system, over the internet, where teachers and students can directly communicate with each other through live audio or video exchange. In the past online courses have mostly been limited to MOOCs (Massively Open Online Courses), such as those offered by companies edX, Udemy or Coursera. In the past two decades, many traditional universities in developed countries have also gradually adopted the online course system for long-distance learners from overseas. However, these have mostly been directed towards irregular students or those attending very specialized courses. In the context of Bangladesh, however, online classes have become relevant only with the spread of the COVID-19 Coronavirus. In fact, they have started to become mainstream worldwide, at all levels of education starting from pre-primary, as a replacement to regular classes, due to the restrictions on movement and lockdowns brought about by the global pandemic.

Background

The SARS-CoV-2 virus was confirmed to spread to Bangladesh in March 2020, with the first case being reported on March 8, 2020. The first coronavirus death was reported on March 18, and soon after, on March 23, a general lockdown was announced by the government. As the public holiday kept being extended due to no improvement in the public health situation, online classes officially first came into discussion around late May to early June 2020. An online survey was conducted by the University Grants Commission over April and May, and a letter on their findings from the survey was sent to the Ministry of Education on June 4, with the intention of forming an Online Education Learning Policy for the then situation and the days to come. The survey concluded that universities were not yet capable of conducting online classes due to the shortage of technical facilities and funds. Furthermore, four of the topranking public universities - University of Dhaka, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET), Jahangirnagar University, and University of Chittagong - reported that they were not intending to conduct online classes over the pandemic unless the government were to provide all the required facilities. The survey indicated that schools, colleges, and madrasas were even worse equipped for online education. Following a meeting on June 18 with the VCs of public universities, the UGC sought special budget allocation from the ministry. UGC Secretary Prof. Ferdous Zaman told the Dhaka Tribune: “The government agreed in principle to conduct online classes in public universities even as 38% of students do 3 not have smartphones or laptops.” Finally, on June 25, the UGC asked all public universities to start academic activities over the internet from July. As quoted by New Age, UGC Chairman Kazi Shahidullah said, “The practical classes and examinations, however, will not be conducted through the online classes. After resuming normalcy, practical classes and examinations will be conducted.” However, as the general holiday kept getting extended, many universities and lower-level institutions continued conducting classes and exams, with some even conducting practical classes virtually. Interviewing students from some of the top universities and colleges in Dhaka, it was also found that a large number of them had granted students promotion to the next semester or year of education based on the results of term finals conducted online. The HSC and equivalent exams of 2020 had to be cancelled and grades were assigned based on students' scores in the previous JSC and SSC public exams. The SSC and equivalent exams of 2021 faced the same fate and the possibility of conducting higher secondary level examinations in 2021 is still under scrutiny. The Ministry of Education, on multiple occasions, tried resuming academic activities of schools, colleges and universities on campus, every time resulting in the extension of the closure imposed. In late February, Education Minister Dipu Moni finally announced the reopening of all institutions up to the higher secondary level on March 30. Still, an abrupt rise in the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths caused by them clearly indicated the beginning of a second wave of the Coronavirus in Bangladesh. Nation-wide lockdown from April 4 was quickly imposed, nullifying all possibilities of resuming on-campus classes. As of late April 2021, online classes and examinations still continue being conducted in Bangladesh across a large number of institutions of all levels, while teachers, students and their guardians have not ceased to complain about all the hurdles involved in the process.

Online Classes: Views and Perspectives of the Students

All educational institutions in Bangladesh remain closed since March 17. However, educational institutions gradually leaned towards an online education system. It is obvious that as an instant change the system was imperfect and everybody has had a hard time adjusting to it. However, after almost a year, students have both positive and negative feelings towards it.

First of all, each and every student is happy that online classes are happening. The monotonous lives of students as they are in home quarantine for a lengthy period are diversified by online classes. It also creates a bridge between students and teachers to stay connected virtually. Online classes also help the students to lead a disciplined life although they are staying at home. Students also think that shifting to online learning was quite a wise decision. Otherwise, due to 4 this long-lasting pandemic, students would be lagging far behind. Those who were in their final semesters have already graduated and new students are also being admitted into many institutions.

However, the negative reviews about this system are quite a lot among the students than the positive ones. The main challenges are economic issues, network and electricity problems and health issues. From our survey, we also get a look at these problems individually. Almost 70% of the students have to spend 500-1000 taka per month for their internet connection and those who are in the rural area have to use mobile data. In that case, they need more than a thousand taka every month. Yet network issues are not solved. More than 50% of students face network issues or load shedding 1-3 times every day, and they have sometimes missed exams or deadlines due to this problem. Also, for some students, this thing is so severe that they can’t even do their classes properly.

Aside from these problems, students are not quite satisfied with the structure of their online courses. More than 70% of students feel that the course structures followed in online are not good enough. Students also don't find the online evaluation process fair and accurate. That's why many students have suggested withholding online exams and continuing the classes only.

COVID-19 and the Current Condition of the Education System in Bangladesh

After the first confirmed case of COVID-19, the Ministry of Education and UGC announced the closure of all primary, secondary and tertiary educational institutions from 17 March until 30 March. From then onwards, there have been several more announcements of extension of the shutdown. Bangladesh, as a developing nation, continues to struggle in terms of education affordability. Many online platforms have sprung forth, but no standardized or well-regulated ones to cater to the general. Many of the software, namely Zoom, Facebook, Skype, MS Teams and others, require premium accounts, high-speed internet and may look complicated to use. Such mismanaged and unmitigated closure has had many repercussions, including restricted intellectual progress and the economic insufficiency of all people involved. A UNICEF survey shows that globally 14 countries have remained veritably closed from March 2020 to February 2021, of whom Bangladesh stands as the 3rd worst performer. Many experts opine that there is an endless scope of improvement.

Closure of Educational Institutes due to Lockdown

After March 23, 2020, all academic activities in the country were instructed by the government to close down activities on campus. Soon after, all board exams after March 2020, including PEC, JSC and HSC, were cancelled and students were handed an auto-promotion to the next class. The pandemic has also forced to shut down the halls, hostels, messes and other residential facilities provided to the students. Shadow education programs and coaching centers had to also shut down in the face of economic infeasibility and lack of students.

The government was unable to celebrate the annual 'Book Day', although all primary and secondary textbooks were made freely available online. Since most children in Bangladesh do not have access to the internet, the government has been broadcasting lessons on television for school students. Most of the universities are conducting online classes, even though not all of the feedback was positive. The only sector that turns out to be the least affected is the Qawmi Madrasa curriculum, which under a string of health restrictions has been allowed by the government to continue classes and take exams, since most of their institutions are residential in nature and are easy to control and monitor.

Following the closure for over a year, the schools have taken preparations to resume classes in a restrained manner from May 30 this year, although the pandemic shows no sign of being subdued. In its 47th annual report to the government, the UGC suggested formulating a policy to introduce a unified test for students vying for a seat at the private universities in Dhaka. On the other hand, admission tests in major public universities were halted until March of this year.

Conducting Online Classes with the Help of Technology

Due to the lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic, our education system had become completely stagnant. But due to the easy availability of digital communication technologies in today's world, a new method of conducting classes soon came forward. For online classes, students and teachers need a suitable device with a reliable internet connection and an online platform or LMS (Learning Management System).

Devices needed for online classes:

The main requisites of these devices are they must have a clear front camera, supported 4G/LTE for good bandwidth, enough screen size for a good vision

The main requisites of these devices are they must have a clear front camera, supported 4G/LTE for good bandwidth, enough screen size for a good vision.

Online Classes in the Viewpoint of Bangladesh

Despite the best efforts of both students and authorities, online classes are not going smoothly. Bangladesh being a developing country, has a lack of proper infrastructure. According to our survey, 99.2% of the students face some sort of inconveniences during online classes

Inconvenience faced by students in online classes

Network Problems

The digitization process of Bangladesh is slow in comparison to other modern and developed countries. So, the infrastructure, as well as the socio-economic condition of Bangladesh, are not up to the mark to provide a smooth internet connection all over the country. But a good internet connection is a must to conduct online classes. There are some ways of providing internet connection in our country. But none of the ways is faultless.

High Cost of Bandwidth

The current pandemic exposed many shortcomings of the country's mobile network and internet infrastructure, which cannot but profit off the helplessness of the masses. An average duration class may take 300 MB of data and if a student attends 3 classes per day, he will need to spend around 1 gigabyte of data, which is beyond the reach of many families in Bangladesh. 64.3% of our subjects had to make adjustments in order to overcome the expenses that came with the online transition, either by setting up new connections, increasing the internet cost or to some extent even changing their location of abode. 92.8% of our subjects spend over BDT 500 per month on internet expenses, and more than a third of them (39.8%) spend over BDT 1000 monthly.

SANEM estimated that 43.90% of the students' families could fall victim to poverty due to the pandemic, forcing 7.70 million additional students' families to enter poverty. Their survey back in June 2020 showed that 44.7% of the students could not attend online classes due to lack of 8 logistics. Moreover, mobile phone users will have to pay higher bills as supplementary duty is set to increase to 15% from the current 10% in the proposed budget for the fiscal year 2020- 21. Students will now have to pay a 33.25% tax to the government for mobile phone use instead of the previous 15%. Therefore, to avail a service worth Tk 100, users will have to recharge Tk 133.25. Or, for each Tk 100 recharge, a user will get services worth Tk 75.05. The education minister has asked the mobile phone authorities to improve the quality and compromise the expense from their CSR funds. However, the companies are yet to respond to this call.

Unavailability of Smart Devices

Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal, in his budget speech, pointed out that 40 million students are not being able to continue regular academic curriculums across Bangladesh.

According to a study by the Bangladesh Teachers' Network, around 40% of the students of Dhaka University are unable to buy devices and internet packages. The latest 2020 data of HIES (Household Income and Expenditure Survey) showed that around 12.70% of the poor families do not have a single mobile phone.

A survey by BioTED BD in June 2020 revealed the underlying fact of this strong dissent when they found only 55.3% of the students having access to a laptop, PC, or a tablet to attend an online class. An average proficient laptop cost ranges from 40 thousand taka to 70 thousand taka, which is far above the average income of a household. To make matters worse, laptops are not available in places other than large cities. Despite all of these, 46% of our subjects have admittedly managed newer devices solely for their online education. Only 27% of our participants have shown satisfaction regarding the current infrastructure.

Rural Area Problems

The rural areas of Bangladesh are not well developed. Electricity is a major concern. Load shedding is constant in these places. Power is gone for hours, especially in the working hours of the day. Moreover, the internet connection is terrible. There is no facility to use the broadband connection in most cases. And as for mobile data, the internet connection is very slow and unstable. It is not suitable for doing live classes. Also, paying for mobile data is a big burden for many rural folks.

At the pre-university level, most schools and colleges in the countryside are not conducting online classes as most of the teachers and students do not have the necessary devices or skills for classes to be conducted online. Hence, the students are falling behind compared to the ones in urban areas.

Load Shedding

According to the Power Development Board (PDB), our country's actual power generation capacity is 19,107 MW. But despite having surplus electricity, we are not getting an uninterrupted power supply. After a survey, it was found that the residents of Mohammadpur, Dhaka face load shedding every day for 20-60 minutes in the lockdown. The condition is even worse in other urban and rural areas. Thus, we are facing a lot of trouble in our online education system. According to our survey, 71% of the students face load shedding during online classes every day. Students face many inconveniences attending online classes due to this frequent load shedding. Also, according to our survey, 82% of the students use broadband as their main mode of internet connection, which becomes useless during load shedding and students have to spend extra money to buy mobile data for that time. Moreover, sometimes due to bad weather, transformers get destroyed, connection wires get torn. These take a long time to fix. Thus, power is gone for hours, and so is the wi-fi. Our survey shows that 32.3% of the students have faced difficulties attending online classes due to load shedding during bad weather.

Socioeconomic Disparity

School students, especially those who study in government institutions, are among the worsthit sections of our society by COVID-19. The lockdown triggered by the pandemic has not just left school education haywire but also made it costly and out of reach of children from poorer families. The kids who study in government schools are likely to suffer in many ways due to the emerging situation. The sad part is that the government's education department does not yet have a policy on this.

Online education, although being a well-intentioned move, is bound to widen the digital divide in society. Poor and middle-class parents already hit by income loss have been forced to cough up extra money on their kids' smartphones, tabs, laptops etc. According to our survey, almost 80% of students had to make some adjustments in order to take online classes.

Adjustments students had to make for online classes

Moreover, kids from these families are unable to catch up with online classes. A major reason for the poor efficacy of online classes is the lack of concentration power of students in lower classes and not-so-great technical quality of apps that connect teachers and students—either audio or video is of poor quality with frequent interruptions in internet connectivity. Many students from rural areas, in fact, parents too, are still to believe that smartphones can also be tools of education.

Fairness of Evaluations

Unlike the traditional in-class exams, there are many obstacles in conducting a fair evaluation online. Online exams limit the capacity for standard forms of educator observation. A typical class in our country has 30-60 students. Teachers cannot monitor every student simultaneously in a video call with a tiny computer screen, which leaves the students a big chance of cheating in various ways. During an online exam, a student can open the browser, search his question on Google and copy the answer, and the teacher will have no way of knowing or proving that.

Almost every class has some group chats among students on Messenger, WhatsApp, Discord, or other platforms. They can discuss answers among themselves during an exam which ruins the entire purpose of individual evaluation. Another problem unique to online classes is hiring a third party to take an exam by proxy. Students can ask a senior student or a friend from another class or other institution and, if needed, pay a reasonable fee for answering the questions for them in the exam. This is mainly seen at the university level. According to our survey, 86% of the students themselves think that online evaluation is not fair.

Impacts of Online Classes on Students

It has been over a year since the lockdown began. Almost all of the universities and many schools and colleges have been trying their best to continue their classes over the internet, though not all feedbacks were positive. Students have been facing many issues attending classes online. These have been impacting the students physically, mentally and academically.

Impacts on Physical Health

Students spend a significant amount of time in their online classes, about 4-7 hours daily. This huge amount of screen time leads to unavoidable physical health issues like:

Impacts on Mental Health

The mental and emotional pressures experienced by students can lower immunity and thus cause deteriorated physical health. Online education can affect mental health in several ways:

Impacts on Academics and Learning

A change in the medium of conducting courses affects not only the physical and mental health of learners but also their overall experience and quality of learning, along with the integrity of their academics. The following factors come into play here:

Conclusion

As a developing economy which is poorly connected compared to its neighbors and the rest of the world, Bangladesh is quite obviously not very ideally suited for the conduction of online classes as a mainstream mode of education. A large portion of the country's student body still lacks the resources needed to participate in academics through the internet.

With no set date for the return to physical classrooms, it is up to students and teachers to make the best of online learning, and it is up to authorities to make the path for them as devoid of hassles as possible. Learning online is different from learning in a face-to-face setting, and for students, it is important to think about their own interests, needs and goals before committing themselves to the virtual classroom experience. Several factors come into play, such as the time they have at disposal, their comfort levels and access to technology, high-speed internet, the platform being used by the institution, etc.

The pandemic has shown us that online learning is going to be part of our reality. The opinions of learners suggest that only through the utmost cooperation between them, their teachers, authorities of the educational institutions and government bodies, it will be possible to optimize the allocation of resources and maintenance of standards with the limited resources available

Recommendations

Adopting a new mode of education is quite a challenge for everyone. The system is not perfect yet, and because of the pandemic and economic condition of the country, there are more challenges to face than usual. According to our survey, students feel that these changes should be brought in to improve the quality and accessibility of online classes

Recommendations for improving the quality of online classes

Suitable Rules for Conducting Online Classes:

Some suitable protocols should be maintained in order to make online classes convenient for both the student and teachers. Such as-

Importance on Students' Opinions

Taking students' opinion is necessary for any kind of education system. But in online systems, it is a prime need. In the online education system, there lie many issues and problems for the students. So, the teachers and authority should stay in touch with every student. They should encourage students to express their problems and opinions freely and maintain privacy. Many students face different financial, residential, and family problems to maintain online classes regularly. So, there must be an open and confidential section where students can freely express their problems. Every student can have their own opinions and resolutions of the teaching style, teaching duration, and evaluation methods. So, the authority should maintain privacy and collect information from the students and do what is necessary for the betterment of the students.

Ensuring Proper Bandwidth and Devices for all Students

Technical issues such as internet connectivity, packet loss and latency can hinder successful online teaching. In this regard, Students might use a wired internet connection (Ethernet LAN) to improve their internet connectivity and reduce technical issues. However, not all students have consistent access to high-speed internet, so it is important to provide low bandwidth and asynchronous learning materials and activities to mitigate connectivity issues. Alternatives of 16 live teaching such as pre-recorded materials with a discussion-board activity that do not require high levels of internet connectivity should be considered.

However, if live teaching activities are unavoidable, these techniques can be applied to reduce the required bandwidth:

Also, every institution must ensure that every student has a proper device for online classes. If any student is unable to get one, the institution should help him in this regard.

Adaptation of Course Content to an Online System

Online and offline classes are not the same. Taking online classes the same way as offline ones is not effective. Online classes should not be just a video of a person talking in front of a blackboard or just reading a PDF. Online classes should be dynamic. Making multimedia presentations, annotating on the screen with a graphics tablet, using simulation software etc. can make the lectures interesting, more effective and easier to follow. Teachers should try to make their classes more interactive. Otherwise, it will be just a one-sided lecture and students will eventually lose interest in the class and get distracted with other things.

Teachers should also care about their time management. Unlike offline in-person classes, one cannot stay concentrated while staring at a computer screen for long. The length of an online class should not exceed 30-40 minutes. Teachers should keep that in mind and plan their lectures accordingly. If they have to take a longer class, they can try giving a 5-minute break in the middle. Also, there should be a break between back-to-back classes for the eyes to rest.

Devising a Dependable Evaluation System:

As any assuring alternatives to written tests are yet to be discovered, many standardized tests are yet to find any alternative to onsite written exams. Nonetheless, as universities have more flexibility with regards to their evaluation methods and so, many cost-effective and efficient methods of virtual examination can be put in place to compensate for traditional methods, as well as tackling plagiarism. Schools and universities can consider a system comprising oral viva, assignments with deadlines, open-book written exams, presentations and multiple-choice questions. In addition, institutions can also benefit from using LMS, Google Tools to keep 17 track of grades and exam tracking software such as ExamSoft to monitor any dishonesty. The UGC must innovate a method to make these cost-effective for everyone.

Providing Training and Devices to Teachers

In the survey conducted for this report, 55.1% of all students recommended providing training to teachers through initiatives by the Government or their respective institutions as a way to improve the quality of online education in this pandemic. This was also deemed the most effective step for improving quality by 11.1% of the responders. To accomplish this vital requirement, the following steps may be considered: