INDIVIDUAL REPORT

Topic: Digital World

Can moving to online learning be a catalyst to create a new and effective education system?

Educational technology plays an incremental role in transforming the traditional

dynamics of education from mere knowledge acquisition to technology-based, deeper
learning-driven models of the 21st century (Dede, 2014). It has facilitated educational
institutes to be networked in a learning grid that has refigured learning as acquiring
information skills; adaptability, problem-solving, communication, collaboration and
supporting learners and teachers in acquiring and accessing. (Global Partnership for
Education, 2020). However, due to imbalance, digitalization is not occurring equally
across the globe, and this is known as the "digital divide".

This report tends to investigate whether moving to online learning be a catalyst to create
a new and effective education system worldwide and what problems are faced while
doing so.

The digital divide refers to the gap between demographics and regions that have access
to modern information and communications technology and those that don’t (Taylor,
2021). Because education, work, and public services are increasingly reliant on
technology, which has evolved with time, the digital divide has emerged as a serious
issue. According to the UNDP in 2021, around 60% of the world’s population is online
but most of those people are in developed countries however this ratio decreases to 1:5
in the least developed countries (Opp, 2021). The United Nations 2017 states that
“Almost 40 percent of the world population lives in low-income countries and about one
billion people have no access to information and communications technology (ICT)”
(Nations, n.d.) Moreover, despite residing in locations with mobile broadband service,
43% of the world's population does not use mobile internet. Thus, fostering digital
inclusion should be the highest priority (The World Bank, 2022).

The gender digital divide is another issue which cannot be ignored. According to an
OECD1 report, In the world, 327 million fewer women than men own smartphones and
mobile Internet connections. Women are under-represented in ICT jobs, top
management, and academic careers and, as shown in this report, men are four times
more likely than women to be ICT specialists (OECD, 2018). Talking about different
regions of the world, India has the widest gender digital divide in Pacific Asia, with 42%
of men and only 21% of women using mobile internet (GSMA, 2020). This is because of

1
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
the social and cultural norms of the country and the intra-household discrimination
which prevents women from accessing digital devices and the internet (Waghmare,
2021)

The 2021 report of UNESCO states that in sub-Saharan Africa, 89% had no access to a
computer while 82% had even no internet access (UNESCO, 2020). Most of the reports
highlighted that the most common reason behind this digital divide was the lack of
technological resources and skills. Out of the 220.9 million population of Pakistan, only
82.90 million people have access to the internet (Kemp, 2022). Subsequently, the UK
despite being one of the most developed countries, faced the intensification of the
digital divide during Covid-19 (Holmes and Burgess, 2020).

In Pakistan, the digital divide has always remained an issue due to the high inflation
rate. In Pakistan, the lack of resources and facilities made it hard for students to adjust
to the new learning environment (Husain, 2021). Technologically advanced nations
have advanced e-learning tools which enable them to stay updated and maintain the
learning flow throughout the school year. Unfortunately, online schooling remains
underdeveloped in Pakistan. Having started as emergency remote learning, it needs
further investment to create more adoption and overcome limitations (Iqbal and
Campbell, 2021).

Indeed, home broadband is expensive outside Pakistan’s big cities, smartphone

penetration stands at 51% this year and only one million school-age children have
regular access to digital devices and bandwidth, according to the Pakistan
Telecommunications Authority (Malik, 2020).

Today, the use of the internet seems like a necessity, especially in the education sector.
The main reason is the amount of knowledge and data available on the internet. The
access and availability of ICT have been associated with academic success and robust
research activities since users can quickly make references (Steele, 2018). However,
the digital divide has exacerbated the already poor education systems in developing
countries. If this gap persists in the future, when a greater percentage of education
systems would be online, students without access to the internet will be given fewer
opportunities to develop new skills. Thus, they will have educational gaps. After the
closure of schools in Pakistan in March 2020, about 5 million students were affected.
The private schools opted for e-learning however, the government schools barely had
access to the internet (Irfan, 2021).

In response to this global issue of the digital divide, many initiatives have been taken.

The yearly observance of "World Information Society Day" by the United Nations, has
helped to raise public awareness of the global digital divide. To reduce the digital divide,
it also established the "Information and Communication Technologies Task Force".
(Reporter, 2021). Additionally, Google's "The Next Billion Users" project has conducted
research and introduced new products for people who are new users of technology. The
Giga Initiative was launched by UNICEF and ITU to connect every school to the
digital platform. Up till now, it has helped more than 1 million students gain access to
the Internet and over 3,200 schools have been connected (giga.global, 2022). During
the time of COVID-19, when schools were shut, the government of Pakistan established
a program on the national TV show which provided lessons to students from
kindergarten to High-school.

Interaction is the process of establishing a meaningful exchange of knowledge and

information between two or more people (Tu and Corry, 2001). Using online learning
during a pandemic caused students to experience stress and anxiety, demotivating
them to study (Pekrun et al., 2017). This is mainly due to the lack of physical interaction
and no face-to-face classes. Students who were used to studying in a lively classroom,
with physical activities, faced difficulties adjusting to the new environment. As social
contact is one of the most important factors in learning, students felt alienated and
isolated. Though digital tools foster digital collaboration and modify learning, a lot of
expert knowledge and instructional training is required for teachers to facilitate students.
However, the quality of such communication could be affected by social presence
(Chang and Hsu, 2016) Face-to-face discussions are usually more effective than
electronic means (Gefen and Straub, 2004), and social presence could particularly
influence information-sharing behaviour. According to (Shen, Yu and Khalifa, 2010)
affective social presence refers to students’ level of emotional connection through online
interactions but on contrary, the remoteness of online learning has made it difficult to
know how online participants feel. Moreover, students with special needs also faced
great problems during online learning sessions. Some special needs students had
access to the tools they needed for class, for example, special keyboards, however,
some students didn’t have access to those tools (Long, 2021). A parent of a special
needs student informed, that her child took quarantine as a vacation, “My school is over.
I’m on vacation. My friends do not go to school either. We are on vacation. He always
saw the situation that way.” (Yazgcayir and Gurgur, 2021)

During online learning, teachers can’t guarantee the presence of students as they
choose to hide their faces and voice-over through online platforms (Wut and Xu, 2021).
Some students inform that online classrooms create restrictions for them. Teachers,
also find it difficult to teach while being unable to observe the student's expressions and
gestures (Bambaeeroo and Shokrpour, 2017). In a report submitted by Wright (2010) to
the Ministry of Education, the Government of New Zealand recognizes that e-learning is
a potent tool for peer and collaborative learning in a technologically rich context of New
Zealand and is expected that it would lead to better learning outcomes and better
student-teacher relationships in future (Palvia et al., 2018). Gallup poll, 45% of parents
said that separation of their child from classmates and teachers is a “major challenge.
As the child is used to the lively study environment in school, the lack of social and
physical interactions with friends made learning burdensome. As claimed by (Adnan
and Anwar, 2020) on attitudes of Pakistani higher education students, 78.6% of the
respondents agreed on the importance of face-to-face and physical interaction during
learning. Lack of access to internet facilities, lack of proper interaction and contact with
students and instructors and ineffective technology were among the major challenges
faced by higher education students in Pakistan (Zulaikha Mohd Basar et al., 2021). The
lack of campus socialization, problems with group study, and slow instructor response
are the causes of this. Similarly, medical students also faced major problems while
learning online. These subjects require practical work with proper tools under
supervision of the educator, the majority of students were not able to do so during
online learning. Hence, their practical skills were impaired (Meyer et al., 2022). 65% of
the students said that they found traditional, face-to-face anatomy learning (dissection
courses) better (Singal et al., 2020).

To overcome these difficulties during online learning, the interaction between learners,
peers and teachers can be strengthened through quality feedback using email, online
communication tools, discussions, and collaborative boards. To keep a check on the
presence of students and to motivate them, teachers could ask questions about the
subject and name a student to answer the question using the microphone or the chat.
To encourage social interaction among students, teachers can plan activities in places
like Kahoot, and Padlet and also make breakout rooms for group and pair discussions
(Dari, 2020). They can also use flexible pace learning by assigning a-synchronous tasks
which the students can complete at any time they are comfortable. To make the
learning of special needs students easier, the government can assess
accommodations. The educators can help the students to adjust by giving adjustments
such as printouts, audio lessons and flexible deadlines (Beech, 2010). Project-based
learning can engage special students by researching to complete their work. This would
not only make learning fun for them but will also boost their self-esteem.
Being a student myself, I faced these challenges. Sometimes during important lessons,
a power outage would happen, and the connection would be lost. When we suddenly
switched to online learning, some of my class fellows did not even have devices to
attend class from. Moreover, understanding technical subjects such as Mathematics got
harder due to the lack of physical interaction. Some teachers would post materials
online and we would have to solve and acquire the knowledge ourselves which
demotivated us.

The information collected in this report is of different reliability. Some sources lack the
name of the author/publisher however due to the website's high authenticity and
balanced perspective for example UNESCO, BBC and Cambridge University. Similarly,
a few of the sources including journal articles i.e. ResearchGate and OMEGA volume
32 were outdated however, the reference was relegated to the content provided in the
report. Other websites, articles and blog posts are tenable with first-hand data from
surveys and interviews. These include OECD, GSMA and Datareportal. Hence, they
have less chance of containing unreliable data. On the other hand, there are some
sources which lack reliability due to the biased perspective, no certified affiliations and
lack of date of publications, author, or publisher name etc. Some journals do not include
volume and issue numbers. These less authentic sources include the journal Asia
Pacific Education Review.
Online learning keeps you abreast of technology by allowing students and teachers to
explore new methods of learning. However, the potential benefits of digital learning can
be truly materialized only through suitable digital tools and proper training of teachers
and learners. In my opinion, solely relying on digital learning is not an effective way of
learning. However, the usage of both learning methods, traditional and digital can create
a wonderful learning system for students.

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