Bridging the Digital Divide: Addressing challenges facing online education in Sri Lanka | Daily News

Bridging the Digital Divide: Addressing challenges facing online education in Sri Lanka

As the Coronavirus takes centre stage, the Daily News with an eye on the future of education in Sri Lanka, interviewed an educator who strives hard to extract the crème de la crème of our country’s youth.

In a conversation with the Daly News, Senior Professor Sudantha Liyanage, the Vice Chancellor of the University of Sri Jayewardenepura, touched on a wide range of topics from online education to future trends.

The interview focused on these developments in a phase where schoolchildren, undergraduates, teachers and lecturers are disconcerted with the pandemic situation. He gives an insight into how Sri Lankan online education functions and measures taken by the government to uplift Edu Tech and raise the motivation of students and teachers.

Assessment on online education

To begin the conversation, I started with Prof. Liyanage’s evaluation on online education. He had a quite lengthy response. “Despite the fact that Sri Lanka initiated the online learning system with the emergence of the pandemic, this is something which has been used by other countries for a while. With the discovery of the first COVID-19 patient in Sri Lanka, we faced the first lockdown in March, resulting in the closure of educational institutes as well as all the other institutes.

The transformation from the Chalkboard Method to the on-screen method is highly challenging, especially in a country like Sri Lanka where there is a varied socio-economic strata. The Open University of Sri Lanka (OUSL) had a method of distant learning for quite some time but there were shortcomings. But looking on the bright side of the task, the government is introducing and experimenting various methods to make remote learning actualize while collaborating with Sri Lanka Telecom providing concessions. According to my understanding, I see online education as a successful growing factor in our country.”

Blend of virtual and in-person classrooms

In order to understand the standpoint of Prof. Liyanage on the amalgamation of physical classrooms and virtual classrooms, I posed this question, will online education continue even after in-person classes resume? His answer was straight forward. “Yes, 60 – 70 percent of learning should be carried out through online platforms and the rest can be covered in physical classrooms.”

“Online education is a lever to the salient issue faced in higher educational institutions - the difficulty of providing hostel facilities and lack of physical classrooms with adequate space. If online education further continues, we will be able to enrol more students for courses. More than 180,000 students pass out from the Advanced Level examination but we only enrol around 40,000 students. If we can perpetuate and popularize remote learning a significant number of students can be facilitated. Thus, I think under new normal conditions or normal – normal conditions online education must be cherished.”

Replacing traditional classroom with online classrooms

“Education is a continuous process from womb to tomb. We cannot be a stagnant nation; therefore, students and teachers should acquire new skills and move along with the tide. Theoretical knowledge can be given through online platforms and for the practical side, physical classrooms can be used. Instead of making students who cram for tests, our focus should be on developing skills in order to establish practical knowledge.”

Factors hindering online education in SL

“The paramount issue lies with devices and poor internet connections. Even in several areas in Colombo there is a poor connection. The Government ought to communicate with telecommunication providers to engage in improving the connections through the Lotus Tower. Nearly 40 percent of students come from unprivileged backgrounds. At the initial point, the government seriously needs to look into the matter of providing devices to the impoverished to ensure educational sustainability.”

Digital Divide

“The University Grants Commission (UGC) is working round the clock to eliminate the technological gap. The UGC is having negotiations with State banks to obtain loans, at least to provide a laptop to every new entrant by next year. The way that we had to step in to online education was sudden. But by providing laptops to every new entrant we will solve these issues up to a great deal. Around 100,000 students are currently receiving education at universities and only 20–30 percent of them possess a laptop. Rapid solutions are needed to address these issues.”

Prof. Liyanage also elaborated that the “government should provide everything free of charge” mentality should be changed. ”We provide food and beverage in university canteens at a very low price. Graduates have no clue about the cost of living. The actual picture is not seen by most of the students; they do not know the actual figures. When everything is off the hook the thinking pattern is also paltry. Even after obtaining a degree, graduates protest demanding jobs from the government and that needs to end.”

Health and online learning

“Most of the students at higher educational institutions possess smart mobile phones. But the case is that although mobile phones are high tech devices the screen size is small which leads to adverse effects on student’s health.”

Prof. Liyanage brought forward several suggestions inviting the attention of administrators and teachers.

“I affirm that schools should limit their teachings for three hours and universities maximum for four hours. The pedagogy carried in physical classrooms for one hour can be covered within a half an hour through an online platform. The so-called prominent schools in Colombo have lost it forcing students to appear online for six hours.

Fixture of online exams

The hot potato among university students was directed to Prof. Liyanage - will the universities conduct exams online?

“The Committee of Vice Chancellors and Directors (CVCD) was suggesting to conduct online exams two months ago. By now the UGC has taken up the issue and the guidelines will be formulated by them. Accordingly, December and January will be the examination period for most of the universities and faculties. Our endeavour is to at least finish the academic years by end January.”

And most importantly only 40 percent marks will be allocated for online exams, the balance is coming through assessments. Our main focus lies on assessing the child; MCQs, short essays and viva will take a prominent place in the new structure.

The non-state education sector is functioning well with online exams as middle class and upper middle-class groups are receiving education at those places.

But in our case, it is different. But now there is a helpful factor that students have also heightened their mental models, targeting to finish their degrees on time.

That is beneficial for the administrative side. Over and above that, the issue lies with several narrow-minded teachers those who stick to the belief that exams should be held physically, whereas many exams worldwide are now held online.

Confidence in students

Prof. Liyanage is taking beliefs and ideologies into opposing ends. “My beliefs are different; I believe that every student is true and honest. We need to commence online exams and assessments. Around the globe may be five percent are cheating, that is unavoidable but we need to minimize those things in our potential. With the prejudice that “cheating” will happen in online exams we are reluctant to go for a change. Sri Lanka too needs to chop and change to meet the 21st century tide.”

Myth about world rankings

What are our universities doing to improve the world rankings? Prof. Liyanage was frank. “World ranking is a business. World ranking paves the path to create a competition among universities to attract students. Most of the countries in the world provide free education only up to high school; in order to enter a university, a fee must be paid. In this case the world ranking matters as universities are in a competition to attract students. Our issue here is we do not have enough space to allocate students, therefore we have brought the ludicrous Z-score to marginalize our students. I am categorically saying that the Z-score is implemented in an arbitrary manner. No other country has the Z-score system. Our first target should be to implement a method to enrol 100,000 students, not to become the best university in the world. A massive task lies in front of us - to increase the student intake. There are several reasons that we have gone down in world rankings. In world rankings, marks allocated on diverse sections, criteria are implemented by business groups - one is the presence of foreign students. It is hilarious when we have to allocate space for foreign students when we cannot even allocate space for our own students. It is not that our teaching methodologies are poor, it is a matter with the allocation of marks which is a business trap. Undoubtedly our students perform well in most of the areas and that is accepted all over the world.

USJP – A brand

What are your strategies to upgrade the university in the short and medium term? Prof. Liyanage answered: “The University of Sri Jayewardenepura is the largest university in terms of student number. My main aspiration is to nourish students with skills, especially entrepreneur skills. We need to give birth to self-sufficient individuals. My sole goal is to manufacture and formulate USJP brands.

The must-haves of the era are elevating the thinking patterns of the students, to be on par with that the infrastructure facilities should be upgraded. A fitting environment must be available to expand the mental scope. Furthermore, student welfare will be increased to raise the intellectual capacities and techno biased methodologies will be introduced to make students sophisticated to face future challenges.”

The USJP has already earned the limelight thanks to its links with foreign universities for Coronavirus research and there is no doubt that it will produce more such alumni as it marches forward to the future.