Ghana’s Educational Institutions Operating Distance Learning Programs

Coronavirus In; Mass Gathering Out: Acid Check out Of Ghana’s Educational Institutions Operating Distance Learning Programs

Coronavirus, moreover often called COVID-19, is precise and has the right brains on this planet desirous about quick-fix choices, nevertheless none look like apparent. As a result of it stands correct now, no person understands the sickness, and any attainable vaccine to treatment the virus is months away, whereas priceless souls proceed to perish. The nations’ leaders have gone out of their method to reduce panic and concern as they wrestle all attainable means to scale back the grip of this killer-disease.

All through Italy, as Mark Lowen (March 2021) put it, “the perennial draw back has struck early this 12 months: with schools and universities now closed (all through the nation), in an effort to embrace the unfold of coronavirus, some 8.4 million youngsters are out of sophistication correctly sooner than the Easter break. It’s an unprecedented response by Europe’s worst-hit nation.” This sentiment cuts all through all worldwide areas on this planet. Inside the USA, UK, Canada, Australia, Germany, and loads of completely different worldwide areas, day-after-day presidential press briefings aiming to supply attainable choices have been the norm.

Faculties are closed, mass gatherings canceled, nationwide transportation strategies grounded, and employees that current gasoline to the financial system have been requested to place down their devices and go dwelling. These drastic measures have been undertaken by our world leaders to help embrace the unfold of the sickness. These closures and vital stay-at-home measures have penalties. Not in distinction to the 2008 financial catastrophe that grounded many less-developed economies, many worldwide areas, along with ours, are vulnerable.

Nonetheless, there’s hope. COVID-19 will in the end be conquered and ultimately eradicated, although we don’t for the time being know how prolonged it will remaining. In its place of shopping for and promoting panic, alarm, and doomsday prophecies, we ought to be calm, prayerful, and constructive as we search specific security from our Lord.

Acid Check out Of Ghana’s Educational Institutions: Are We Prepared?

Leaders from many nations which have been hit with the sickness have decidedly canceled schools and mass gatherings. The President of our nation “orders closure of all non-public and non-private schools and halted all forms of public gatherings throughout the nation as part of measures to cease a attainable outbreak of the coronavirus throughout the nation” (Myjoyonline, 2021). He extra ordered the Ministry of Education in collaboration with the Ministry of Communication to roll out distance learning packages. This, throughout the creator’s view, is lifelike and achievable, nevertheless throughout the face of our current educational constructions referring to distance learning, this could be a tall order.

Are our educational institutions, every pre-tertiary and tertiary, ready for distance learning packages? By distance, I think about the President to be referring to learning aided by know-how the place learners and instructors are separated by space, and instructing and learning are completed asynchronously. Many developed nations are capable of swiftly switch on-line on account of they beforehand have been partially doing so. Faculties in Ghana have not however achieved the online parity, and though it is attainable, our educational policymakers ought to put cash into rising on-line learning infrastructure that does not rely carefully on tutorial coronary heart operations as is the case in most tertiary institutions that perform distance learning packages in Ghana.

Providing Context-Explicit Distance Learning Programs

Distance learning fashions have gone by quite a few generations. Presently, we’re in Period 5, based mostly on evaluation (Heydenrych & Prinsloo, 2010). The earlier generations relied carefully on newly developed utilized sciences such as a result of the printing press, books, film, animation, radio and television, shorthand (i.e., Gregg Shorthand), Video Home System (VHS), computer-assisted learning, floppy diskette, telephones, telegrams and faxes, telex and teleprinters, video conferencing, audio-graphics, pen or flash drives, internet and the World Broad Internet, and Internet 2 to Internet 4 utilized sciences.

The technology-powered distance learning packages moved from the Correspondence College system to the direct learning strategies and to the latest eLearning/mLearning strategies. Subsequently, utilizing the phrase know-how in distance learning does not solely denote on-line learning or learning powered by the latest Learning Administration Strategies (LMS). Many equate distance learning to on-line learning and that any distance learning packages with out utilizing the LMS mustn’t actually on-line.

Know-how, as a result of this reality, is a conduit by which distance learning packages are powered. The know-how is not the highest of itself; its most important perform is to ship the curriculum to the learners. Newly developed utilized sciences have provided elevated options for the tutorial enterprise, nonetheless, they aren’t the savior or the message, they’re the messenger throughout the context of a lot much less developed worldwide areas. Take into consideration my earlier examples of distance learning utilized sciences, one would possibly infer {{that a}} floppy diskette or a teleprinter was as quickly as an enviable know-how.

Heydenrych & Prinsloo (2010) have proposed the following 7 necessities to take care of future period of distance learning to be context-specific:

1. School college students sort part of peer collaborative groups and communities of observe, which they share with alumni, employers, group members, and tutors.
2. Institutions ought to design acceptable blended learning selections in a menu of service from which school college students can tailor-make their learning experiences to allow for max self-organization of learning with assist.
3. Larger coaching institutions have, for too prolonged, distanced themselves from the communities by way of which they themselves are positioned, and from which their school college students originate. Larger coaching ought to uncover creative strategies to speak “from place” and “to place,” from their specific location contained in the broader neighborhood (consisting of communities, employers, households and completely different stakeholders).
4. Giving school college students entry to wi-fi and distant utilized sciences by negotiation with suppliers.
5. Learning is not content-driven nevertheless fashioned and paced by activities- and inquiry-based learning, which is embedded throughout the current and future scholar, and in employment and societal contexts.
6. Regional manufacturing facilitates the speedy distribution of learning provides.
7. Making use of (and contributing to) generic and open content material materials, which could also be accessed from plenty of platforms (all forms of good models).

Mobile Phone Diffusion In Instructing And Learning

Mobile utilized sciences with cell connectivity proceed to dominate the info communication know-how market in sub-Saharan Africa. In response to the Pew Evaluation Center (2015), cellphone utilization in Africa pales in comparison with that of developed worldwide areas like the USA of America. Nonetheless, there was a dramatic surge throughout the progress of smartphone utilization in sub-Saharan Africa. As of 2014, the following worldwide areas recorded extreme percentages of cellphone utilization: Uganda 65%, Tanzania 73%, Kenya 82%, Ghana 83%, and South Africa, 89%. In the equivalent 12 months, the USA’ cellphone utilization was 89%, the equivalent as in South Africa and solely in single-digits, bigger than Ghana and Kenya. Among the many many many makes use of of cell telephones in Africa for a twelve-month interval, texting was on the forefront (Pew Evaluation Center, 2015).

Pleasure On-line (2013) reported that Ghana was ranked by the Worldwide Telecoms Union Report as major in Africa with additional people using or linked to mobile broadband. Laary (2016) mentioned that for the interval ending December 2015, Ghana’s cellular phone voice penetration value surged to 128%, far above earlier projections by telecommunication consultants. The adoption of mobile know-how with its quite a few apps can perform a conduit for mobile learning.

In Ghana, the commonest format adopted in distance learning is the tutorial format, the place just a few on-line interactions occur; in most instances, there are usually not any on-line interactions. The universities that enroll their school college students by the hole learning mode rely carefully on print provides throughout the sort of course modules and school college students meet recurrently all through weekends in tutorial services all by way of the nation the place they get hold of face-to-face instructions. Only some packages embrace motion pictures and voice reveals of their distance learning pedagogy (Larkai, et al, 2016; Yeboah & Ewur, 2014).

Nonetheless, with mobile learning utilized sciences like “WhatsApp Messenger,” rising worldwide areas have no excuses as to why they aren’t ready to undertake on-line learning throughout the remotest components of the nation the place connectivity is a major setback. All over the place a cellular phone is used, whether or not or not for WhatsApp, electronic message, SMS, video, or image sharing, on-line learning may be attainable. Inside the academic environments, merely as domestically, households and enterprise areas, WhatsApp Messenger has been used to create group chats for work teams, social networking, and learning.

WhatsApp Messenger For mLearning

Evaluation on the making use of of WhatsApp Messenger throughout the classroom is new and rising, nonetheless, its utilization as a social media machine on smartphones is widespread (Cetinkaya, 2017; Bouhnik & Deshen, 2014; Yeboah & Ewur, 2014; Church & de-Oliviera, 2013). WhatsApp is essentially the most well-liked mobile messaging software program extensively used worldwide and it is ranked as a result of the major by the use of month-to-month vigorous prospects, based on a study of over 22,500 sources worldwide (Statista, 2018). WhatsApp, nonetheless, launched that the messaging app is now being actively utilized by higher than 2 billion people worldwide (Bucher, 2021)

WhatsApp choices embrace:

• Textual content material: straightforward and reliable
• Group chat: retaining involved with love ones, people in your neighborhood, enterprise companions, and parishioners
• On the web and desktop: retaining the dialog going anytime, anyplace, wherever
• Voice and video calls: free face-to-face dialog, when voice and textual content material mustn’t ample
• End-to-end encryption: offers security by default
• Photographs and motion pictures: the prospect to share moments that matter
• Voice messaging: using the voice messaging system to convey emotional moments
• Paperwork: attaching and sharing paperwork along with PDFs, spreadsheets, slideshows, photos, and Phrase paperwork

WhatsApp Messenger choices make it easy for instructing and learning. The app makes use of cellphone internet connections (4G/3G/2G/EDGE of WiFi) of prospects to ship and get hold of messages. That is, as long as there’s data on prospects’ telephones, sending and receiving messages are free. WhatsApp launched in Might 2018 at its F8 developer conference in San Jose, California, that over 65 billion messages have been despatched by prospects with higher than 2 billion minutes of voice and video calls made day by day on the app platform, and about 1 billion people use this messaging app each day (Al-Heeti, 2018).

Promoting Learner Interaction In Distance Learning

Jurado, et al, (2014), categorized learning administration strategies choices into 4 fully completely different machine groups, significantly: distribution, communication, interaction, and administration.

1. Devices for distribution allow lecturers to add paperwork, on the market to school college students. Earlier it was primarily textual content material paperwork and instantly it may even be fully completely different types of media recordsdata. Nonetheless, the tactic continues to be one-way, that is, teacher-to-learner distribution of knowledge.
2. Devices for communication allow information to go each method along with from student-to-student. The most typical occasion is E-mail.
3. Devices for interaction title for response and strategies. Dialogue boards are the most common occasion. These devices are of good curiosity since they may promote scholar train and cooperation, subsequently enhancing the tutorial experience.
4. Devices for course administration are used to look at and doc the tutorial course of, pretty than to facilitate instructing or learning (p.4).

Jurado’s classification think about course administration; teacher-to-student and student-to-student interactions. Any sort of a distance learning program that lacks the interactivity piece is not full and is missing the core pedagogical attributes of instructing and learning. That is readability and focus of learning targets, variety of media, and integration of the media chosen to take care of learning targets. Fourth- and fifth-generation distance learning packages promote synchronous and asynchronous interactions by dialogue boards: teacher-student, student-teacher, student-student (peer) interactions. Any sort of distance program that does not meet the above requirements cannot be appropriately characterised as distance learning. A number of these packages need to be appropriately labeled as grownup extension packages or grownup weekend packages.

Media Selection

WhatsApp Messenger, as a social media machine, is inherently interactive for social media features. This vital attribute has been explored by many researchers to bolster instructing and learning in rising worldwide areas (Bouhnik & Deshen, 2014; Cetinkaya, 2017; Church & de Oliveira, 2013; Gronlund & Islam, 2010; Koomson, 2019; Motlik, 2008). In response to Tony Bates (2015), properly timed and acceptable strategies from the coach to the learner is a vital aspect of interaction. Thus, with reference to media alternative, the following questions are value considering:

• To what extent is interaction enabled or managed by the media chosen?
• To what extent is strategies attainable inside a specific medium?
• What kind of interaction will best end in a specific type of learning consequence, and what know-how or medium best offers such a interaction?

Tony Bates’ (2015) SECTIONS model has been utilized by many researchers throughout the Distance Education enterprise. Bates’ framework offers a set of requirements to help inform educational institutions or educational suppliers when making choices referring to the choice of acceptable media for instructing and learning. SECTIONS model stands for School college students, Ease of Use, Worth, Instructing capabilities, Interaction, Organizational factors, Networking, and Security and privateness factors. Regarding media alternative, Walter McKenzie (2002) posited that:

People are not always conscious of each medium they encounter; mode of provide seems to get misplaced throughout the mix as we’re inundated by volumes of information in limitless cycles. Whereas it is easy to develop into desensitized as consumers of knowledge, as educators we’re in a novel place to maximize media alternative and get a take care of on this explosion of knowledge for our school college students. As McLuhan beneficial prophetically, the medium would possibly not solely be the messenger, it may be the message.

When I am discussing the current state of know-how with lecturers throughout the nation, it turns into clear that they actually really feel positive by their entry to know-how, irrespective of their state of affairs. If a teacher has a television-computer setup, then that is what he or she will use throughout the classroom. Then once more, if there’s an LCD projector hooked as a lot as a teacher demonstration station in a very outfitted lab, he or she shall be additional apt to utilize that organize. Teachers have always made the right of irrespective of they’ve obtained at hand, but it surely certainly’s what now we now have to work with. Teachers make due (p. 6).

Conclusion

Inside the above analysis, the creator is of the opinion, based on best practices, that for WhatsApp to work appropriately in any classroom in Ghana, there need to be intentional designs and a step-by-step technique to point out every the lecturers and the students use the making use of to achieve the right outcomes. With regards to deciding on media for distance learning packages in Ghana, there isn’t a such factor as a one-size-fits-all technique. In plenty of instances, “a medium would require the intervention of a teacher or trainer every to set actions throughout the learning provides and to supply acceptable strategies, thus together with to pretty than reducing the workload of instructors.” Moreover “the place instructors ought to intervene each to design actions or to supply strategies, the charge or time requires on the coach are liable to be higher” (Bates, 2015, p. 303).

The creator moreover believes that instructing every lecturers and school college students use WhatsApp for educational features in a distance learning environment is possible on account of “seemingly intractable points have been solved by advances in processing power and capabilities. Not manner again, autonomous autos have been considered technologically infeasible on account of amount of information that needed to be processed in precise time. Speech recognition was unreliable and required intensive speaker-dependent teaching courses. Cellphones have been as quickly as “auto-mobile” telephones, requiring a car trunk full of equipment” (Earley, 2017, pp. 58-64).

Accurately built-in, mobile learning powered by WhatsApp Messenger typically is the reply for our nation and loads of completely different rising nations. Nationwide emergencies, similar to the COVID-19 and others however to return, are indicators to alert us for proper planning and implementation of a powerful distance learning program all through the nation. We ought to go away no stone unturned on this enterprise, as we collectively seek out the right utilization of ubiquitous utilized sciences for instructing and learning.