Ethics and Online Education
There could not be a more appropriate topic to dwell upon than online education during the COVID-19 pandemic worldwide. It’s not that we are completely unaware of this technology but, it’s just the current period of crisis that has made it highly important and relevant, with global EdTech investments reaching US$18.66 billion in 2019 and the overall market for online education projected to reach $350 Billion by 2025.
There has always been a debate about whether education should be delivered by conventional classroom approaches or whether the younger generation should be brought into the world of online education. However, all would accept that there was no adequate forum that could explicitly show the usefulness of online learning before the last decade, but recent developments in the creation of educational platforms have made that possible.
For example, the Khan Academy was founded by Mr. Salman Khan in 2004 only to provide some tutorial support to a few of his relatives. In his
wildest hopes, he could not have realized the trends that have become today and, more importantly, how it has revolutionized the whole education system.
There are about 42 million registered users on the site from as many as 190 countries offering tutorials ranging from basic math to economics, art history to advance topics such as computer science, which indicates that the content provided is universally accepted by both students and teachers of all age groups.
Mr. Khan has successfully shown that this can be a great help to students with special needs like autism, or other mental disorders. Since the purpose behind the creation of this site was to support the global society, there have been such high rates of popularity and worldwide acceptance. In addition to offering instructional resources, the site also provides a wide variety of practice activities that students can conduct at their speed and time. one of the first schools to adopt this teaching portal was Los Altos School, for fifth and seventh-grade students.
One of the key benefits of the portal pointed by the school was the student progress data generation which could be accessed by the teachers at all times. That could allow the teacher better to understand the actual question that the student was facing, as that was a case-specific and not a generic study.
Mr. Khan’s main goal was to humanize the classroom to offer greater autonomy to the students which he has done to a large degree.
During a small chit-chat with bill gates, Mr khan pointed out that to provide a major boost to each student their team introduced the concept of providing badges and points to the students so they would consider studies like a game and put some extra effort to improve their overall academic standings.
This platform has provided enormous opportunities in terms of employment as any registered person had the benefit of turning into a mentor/study coach to a specific student.
According to a report of the economic forum the current coronavirus scare has affected as many as 1.2 billion children worldwide across 186 countries thus making such online platforms extremely useful. As a CS professional, I strongly believe that education has changed dramatically, with the distinctive rise of e-learning, whereby teaching is undertaken remotely and on digital platforms. Numerous researchers have pointed out that online learning can help to increase retention of information among all age groups, consuming less time and overall effort and thus making these portals of utmost importance.
As far as the ethical context is concerned, I feel that these portals are incredibly helpful in upholding the motto of education for all,’ because they do not differentiate students based on their caste, color, or area,
because they offer equal opportunity for all strata of people. Some people might worry that such a transition from traditional classroom teaching to online platforms could be time-consuming and may need months of planning but there have already been successful transitions amongst many universities.
For example, Zhejiang University managed to get more than 5,000
courses online just two weeks into the transition using “Ding Talk ZJU”.many professor have suggested that some services like Lark- a Singapore-based collaboration suite have helped them tremendously and they intend to stick to them even after the pandemic with an idea of traditional offline learning and e-learning going hand by hand.
Some study has found that, on average, students recall 25–60 percent more content as they train online compared to just 8–10 percent in the classroom. This is largely due to students being able to study quicker online; e-learning takes 40–60 percent less time to learn than in conventional classroom environments as students can practice at their own pace, go back and read, skip or speed up throbbing. through concepts as they choose.
One thing which is crystal clear is that this pandemic has utterly disrupted the education system that many relevances. Some people are also cautious of their post-pandemic use, while others expect to make e-learning part of their ‘daily routine’ after seeing first-hand advantages. What has been made apparent by this pandemic is the value of disseminating information across continents, through industries, and all aspects of society. If online learning technologies will play a role here, it is the duty of all of us.
