The high cost of data and limited access to learning devices as well as electricity was the major setbacks to learning remotely during the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a new report by T4 Education and EdTech Hub.
The report, titled ‘Effective Assessment and Progress Monitoring in an Online Environment’, provides insight into how tools and techniques for monitoring progress need to be improved if governments are to address learning gaps widened during the pandemic.
The report was a product of a study conducted to understand how teachers and school leaders in Nigeria and other low and middle-income countries (LMICs) countries assessed progress when students were learning remotely during the Covid-19 pandemic.
It was carried out in six countries including Nigeria, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Philippines, and South Africa, and was based on focus group discussions with teachers and school leaders in each country.
The report highlighted how consistent access to electricity proved a big challenge for teaching students and tracking their progress during the pandemic as well as a lack of access to devices.
Verna Lalbeharie, executive director of EdTech Hub, said the extreme challenge placed on teachers in Nigeria and around the world to provide continuity of learning for students in a long-term emergency environment, is something from which everyone must learn.
Lalbeharie said there is no piece of technology that can replace the art of good teaching, adding that this was true before the pandemic and has been deeply underscored in the last two years.
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“What we can do, however, is enhance that art by providing teachers with evidence-based, effective tools and assessment systems which are essential to tackling learning losses in LMICs exacerbated by the pandemic. And drawing on the lessons learned in this report, we can prepare for and properly monitor student progress the next time a crisis forces schools to close,” Lalbeharie said.
The report further indicated that the cost of data was also widely cited by studied participants as an issue students and teachers had to contend with, adding that cheaper data rates at night meant students often had to work late in the evenings.
In the report, a teacher in a rural area described how some of her students’ parents could not afford to buy N100 worth of data (.20 GBP/.26 USD), which would be exhausted within 5-10 minutes.
“To help manage data costs, one suburban school replaced their use of Facebook with WhatsApp and Telegram, as those use less data than Facebook. Another suburban school switched from digital assessment to sending home printed worksheets because of the cost of data,” the report noted.
According to the report, a teacher in a remote area of Nigeria that had not been badly affected by Covid-19 was holding ‘illegal’ classes in a rural school during lockdown while a school leader from Nigeria who could not reach her own students provided evening classes to the children who lived in her neighbourhood.
“When digital tools could be employed, text and voice notes were commonly used for both instruction and assessment as practical ways of disseminating materials without using too much data. The practice of recording video lectures, posting on YouTube, and sending the link to students was another method used by teachers. When students had free time and access to a device, they would study the posted materials and then take a quiz to check for their learning,” the report further noted.
Also, limited access to devices and data cost issues created extremely inefficient workflows for teachers such that most of them relied on receiving hundreds of WhatsApp messages a day from students at different hours.
This created significant workloads, and stress, and often directs financial costs for teachers while students not having access to devices during the day often compelled teachers to work into the night.
