The Covid-19 Pandemic has change Education.

[Inoke Raseru, Communication student at Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta]

With many schools shut across the nation, millions of children’s have had adapted to new types of learning. The government is currently focusing on strengthening the human capital to be more tech-savvy as part of their digital economy strategy in facing the so-called industry 4.0. As a result, education has changed dramatically, with the distinctive rise of e-learning, whereby teaching is undertaken remotely and on digital platforms.

The disruption caused by COVID-19 to everyday life meant that as many millions of children’s around the nation have missed out on early childhood education in their critical pre-school years. They thus missed a stimulating and enriching environment, learning opportunity, social interaction and in some cases adequate nutrition’s. This is likely to compromise their longer-term healthy development, especially those children from poor and disadvantaged families.

In the higher education sub-sector, while online learning has generally taken place through recorded lectures and online platforms, some of the students has faced some challenging in Internet data for online classes every day.

Millions of peoples around the nation are experiencing technical difficulties because of the high usage rate of online learning systems, video streaming software, & other digital tools. The platforms are overloaded: poor quality video and audio, internet problems. Internet connection is either unstable or the current data plan is not enough to cover the progressive with the “homework gap”. Teachers are trying to manage the bad internet connection during the online lessons.

Unfortunately, little can be done to resolve the connectivity problem when everyone get online. Calling your provider and seeking advice can work out in some cases, as well as upgrading your current internet plan or hoping for 5G coverage. However, the sad truth is we all have to adapt to a slow internet speed amid the coronavirus lockdown and learn to live with it.

As a student participating in the home-learning program, the online school was confusing to adjust to as we had not been prepared through simulation or practices beforehand. A student reported the home-learning program to be even more stressful than regular classrooms. Some of the common reasons for this went along the line of normal classes may have been difficult, but having friends makes it so much more manageable and less stressful. Online classes take out the benefits of having friends to socialize with and being stuck alone with nothing but assignment.

Thankfully, there now some alternative to online learning in which students in less fortunate situations could participate. Education and Culture Ministry recently introduced a Belajar di Rumah (Learning at Home program through state-owned broadcaster TVRI) (for the next three months) and a platform called Guru Berbagi (Teachers sharing), providing creating learning and teaching materials. To add on this, however, the government should still have more offline options for students without internet access, such as the distribution of books and learning materials.

The students believe offline classes are better but they are comfortable with e-classes also. Therefore, only time will tell when we will return back to school and how it feels like when everything will back to normal.