“There are situations when WhattsApp just crashes and all your information is gone, nowhere to track it, nowhere to retrieve the information, nowhere to get the lost class or the lost information and data, that’s a very major issue”
By Emmanuel Olorunsola
As schools in Nigeria try to offer one form of online lecture or the other in their responses to disruptions to academic calendar occasioned by the COVID-19 pandemic, some students have complained that virtual classes by their institutions are not effective and that their lecturers are not well equipped for the job.
A student at a journalism institute in Lagos, Musa Babatunde, said the online class has not been effective, describing most of the lecturers as ‘analogue.’
He said, “Most of our instructors are not equipped for online classes. I will call them men of the analogue era, those who are not very conversant with the digital world.”
To him, COVID-19 pandemic has brought to fore the need to review Nigeria’s educational system and put in place the things required to make it work. He said, “This pandemic has also opened doors for a lot of opportunities to review our educational system in the first place. The time has come to ask ourselves if the current system is actually working and if what we have is what we actually need.”
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Babatunde said the online classes were in some cases delivered via WhattssApp, adding that this had its downsides. To him, this system was forced on students in his school without any form of prior consultation. “We were not adequately prepared for a switch. There was no form of discussion on the issue; no one consulted us-no round table discussion. COVID-19 is an emergency that affects students too. It actually met lecturers unprepared and as students, we were not allowed to make any input to the new method of lecture delivery, ’’ he said.
Another student, Ajibade Morakinyo said online classes have not been effective and students can experience loss of lecture notes when apps like WhatsApps crashed.
He said, “Online class is strange to the Nigerian Educational System, we were not used to online class before, so when the pandemic struck, there was no other option than for us to fall back to what we were not used to in the first place. So, schools had to revisit what they had long abandoned.”
Stating the hazard in online classes via Whattssapp, Morakinyo said, “The challenges there are quite many because we are not used to it, it is strange to everyone. When the lectures started, I must confess, that even up till now, it is still not very effective. That’s where you have issues, especially when your school utilises WhatsApp as a platform to convey online lectures to students.
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“There are situations when WhattsApp just crashes and all your information is gone, nowhere to track it, nowhere to retrieve the information, nowhere to get the lost class or the lost information and Data, that’s a very major issue.
“Data is quite expensive and the way it is being taken out of one’s phone these days is amazing. You have to subscribe for N1000, N3000 and you just realise that it is exhausted in less than five days and this is a student that is not working and hence often lack the financial means of recharging one’s phone on such regular basis.”
Commenting on the feasibility of holding exam through the WhattssApp online platform as being proposed by the Nigerian Institute of Journalism, for example, Morakinyo, said, “How much of an online examination can a school that is not successful with the online class do? That will be catastrophic.
“They shouldn’t even think about it. When I got to school this morning and I saw online examination, I was just laughing. Which platform are they using? Number one, the school is not sophisticated, they couldn’t respond rapidly to the pandemic. It locked down everything. That is why we utilized the already established platform which is called WhatsApp, our portal is not working; our portal is not effective.
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“Normally, a school is supposed to do online lectures and exams through the school portal, not through a platform that is already established like WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter or all these social media. Exams should be held through a school’s own website which is well programmed and ordained but my school doesn’t have a school portal.
“So, if they are proposing exam, we have to note that many things should be put in place. Number one, data, if you’re setting time for students to finish like JAMB does, what happens to a student that has data connectivity issue due to poor network, what happens?
“You know, that won’t be a case of students not writing the exam, the issue now is technology and its deficiencies. In such a case, the fault is not that of the student but of technology. How can a student fail just because of technology and not because the student does not have the ability to pass. These are things beyond the student’s control creeping in to cause failure. Online exam is fine provided the school can do so through a well protected platform.”
Awelewa Oluwatosin is a National Diploma 1 student of the Nigerian Institute of Journalism, Lagos. According to him, the online classes of the institution have not been fruitful.
He said, “I won’t lie to you; most students prefer the physical classes. They have been used to physical classes. For example, I am used to the physical class and I tend to concentrate more when I’m in class not in online class. The online class has not really been fruitful, it is not really palatable, seriously, and it is not good enough. I can tell you the truth because the level of concentration is very, very low.”
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Asked to offer suggestions on how online classes can work better, Oluwatosin said, “The first question that we should first ask ourselves is this: Has there been a good environment for even the normal physical classes that we do? If we cannot get that right, how do we expect to get the online class right? We have about two thousand students in a one thousand seating capacity hall. How do you expect students to concentrate well in such situations?”
Oluwatosin stressed that foreign countries’ environment are conducive for e- learning. He said that these countries have everything ready such as data, good network, electricity and money but in Nigeria when Corona virus came the schools were confused on how to go about their activities which made some schools to use WhatsApp.
He noted that some lecturers were doing well while others were not. He said, “Some lecturers are considerate while some are not, some of them keep giving students exercises upon exercises without considering if the students have power supply or not.”
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