In the midst of an unprecedented and unabated spread of Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic across the globe, it is unthinkable that Nepal alone can remain unaffected by the apocalypse of such a scale and magnitude. It has gravely affected every aspect of human life and activities with both immediate and long term consequences. Education sector of Nepal, like in many other countries in the world, has also been one of the first and hardest hit by the crisis.

Daunting challenges:

Students across all levels are confined to their homes ever since the lockdown was clamped on March 24. Potential Covid-19 outbreak panic engulfed the country exactly at a time when the national level Secondary Education Examination (SEE) of 10th grade was scheduled to start. While the government took early measures to ask schools to complete their final examinations ahead of schedule, it unfortunately could not go ahead with the SEE, which this year would see 4,82,219 aspirants. Several universities also postponed a number of their examination schedules for both graduate and undergraduate levels. The next possible schedules of the postponed exams are not yet in sight given the continuity of the panic situation arising out of the COVID-19 outbreak.

Virtual mode:

The government mandatorily closed all educational institutions as part of the lockdown. Apart from the exam postponements, academic institutions are under immense pressure to switch to online virtual classes to maintain the pre-announced academic calendars of their respective institutions. Online mode of education is undoubtedly an attractive proposition, but in our context it is equally a daunting task and has its own challenges to conceptualize, develop, and deliver the courses to large-sized classes in particular. Willingness of both teachers and the learners to accept the change alone will not be enough unless supporting and facilitating infrastructure, technology and affordability of the same are convincingly ensured.

The realistic possibility, however, has been presented by modern information technology and many emulative practices. For example, some organizations, like Karkhana, Deerwalk, Midas to name a few, have come up with online learning resources targeting the school kids and offering free video resources for students up to Grade 12. The flow of the traffic to these sites has registered a substantial spurt, post the COVID-19 onslaught.

Similarly, Kathmandu University (KU)’s initiatives exemplify the way current challenges after suspension of brick-and-mortar classes could be compensated even by the Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). KU has already commenced online delivery of classes across its Schools like Engineering, Education, Arts, Management, and Science using, inter alia, Zoom, Google Hangout, and Google Meet platforms. Pre-recorded online videos are being shared on YouTube by faculty members while facilitating students on ease in delivery and interaction. Kathmandu University School of Management (KU SOM) has already initiated online classes for its BBA, MBA, EMBA and MPhil programs. School of Management at Tribhuwan University has also started delivery of some courses for MBA and MPhil programs online. The entire experiment itself could be a new lesson in terms of the efficacy of teaching-learning processes in Nepal.

Digital Challenge:

For the majority of the faculty members, these online platforms are easy to use, convenient, and interactive. While the younger lot is able to adapt to these technologies rather easily, some of the senior faculty members expressed difficulty in adjusting to use of new technology.

The effectiveness of these classes are of varying nature depending on the type of courses being taught. For instance, teaching quantitative courses online without the use of whiteboards is fraught with special problems especially when the faculty is not instantly versed to use alternative supplementary means. Some of the faculty members voiced their concerns such as non-availability of proper net connectivity of adequate speed and bandwidth. Likewise, the free version of Zoom allowed scope for unauthorized persons intruding into the discussions acting as irritants.

An eco-system of this kind obviously deprives faculty members an opportunity for conducting audience analysis and tracking the receptiveness of students without video effects. Hence, this limitation needs to be overcome by constant monitoring to assess the assimilation of knowledge through intelligent Q&A follow up. However, designing of online mode assessments would undoubtedly pose challenges ahead for the faculty members, especially those taking virtual classes with a large number of students, 100 or more.

Voices of Stakeholders:

Young and tech-savvy students have been found to be highly enthusiastic to adopt the online medium of learning. Unwanted distractions, like those in classroom settings, are automatically absent and that helps in unhindered learning even when one is far away from the college. Many BBA and MBA students are unequivocal to acknowledge that online learning accords flexibility while allowing for better opportunities for discussions.

The school managements initiating the online classes understand that the crisis has left them with no choice but to adopt online teaching and expeditiously adapt to the new technologies or else it would render the entire academic calendar defunct. It is time for educators to seriously start looking at the huge opportunities of online teaching that were either misunderstood or their true potential were thus far grossly underestimated. For now, the experience of trying these online platforms shall open avenues for learning, unlearning and relearning for the faculty members themselves and the educational institutions as well.

Way Forward:

Blended education, comprising a mix of online and offline mediums, is already in vogue in some Nepali universities and business-schools. For instance, KU SOM uses a virtual classroom (Moodle) that allows faculty members to post resources, design quiz, take attendance, conduct evaluation, and share feedback even in a regular classroom environment while facilitating online interaction.

A developing country like Nepal, crippled with a lack of adequate and appropriate sustainable infrastructure in place and readiness on the part of institutions to upgrade them, is bound to face serious online teaching delivery challenges, both in the immediate and long run. To resolve this, the government should invest in digital infrastructure.

On the other hand, universities need to invest in plagiarism-check resources and fully licensed versions of learning resources such as Zoom, etc in the near future. It would be in the long-term interest of HEIs to build and develop their own IT infrastructure with remote connections to facilitate conference calls. Additionally, they should also invest in developing applications for online classes so data is not shared to third parties for reasons of security and copyright.

Educational Institutions in Nepal also can learn from Lambda School to understand how technology can be leveraged in the teaching-learning process. Similarly, even internet service providers can design student-friendly packages as internet facilities may not be equally available to students outside of big cities.

This technological transition shall become a common practice once online learning starts pervading the entire HEI landscape and becomes the new norm. Every stakeholder of the HEI ecosystem has to keep this need in a critical mission mode and move ahead to be able to remain and gain in these most uncertain times.

The author is Assistant Professor of Marketing at Kathmandu University School of Management (KU SOM). She regularly writes for national dailies like The Kathmandu Post, other dailies and monthly magazines such as New Business Age in Nepal. She has also written on business issues of Nepal, focusing on marketing aspects and consumer behavior, and on Nepali business education in national and leading English dailies and business magazines and also on online education portals. On twitter, she can be reached @RosheeLC