Can online learning take Bangladesh's education system to the next stage?

Horace Mann had a noble vision of providing quality education to all children regardless of their identities, and he worked towards that by creating the first public school and standardising the curriculum. His insights deeply influenced today's classroom education.

Bangladesh Government's educational statistics for 2021 said that there were 20,234,646 students enrolled in different levels like School, College, Madrasah, Technical-Vocational, Professional and more.

Distance learning became a way to adapt to difficulties during COVID-19 in Bangladesh across schools, intermediary institutes, and universities. Anna Eliot Ticknor's ingenious step in launching the first correspondence education program led to the magnifying of distance learning.

The world didn't see the first computer-assisted system able to teach multiple subjects until 1960. No platform or idea comes without falters, as we know, but online learning became integrated with our lives so much afterwards that classroom teaching has become inadequate up to some extent.

Bangladesh remains unable to maximise or adapt to the culture of distance learning; it has led to the inadequacy and gap in finding a sufficient amount of citizens having basic-level digital skills.

One of the reasons is the vast population where proper influence and guidance are not available and improper and meagre use of resources.

One of the most alarming findings is that the amount of skilful, capable fresh graduates who learned computer science are not meeting the recruiters' demands to get into the job, and the available jobs to graduate ratio is 2.5 to 2.667 based on a study conducted by Asian Development Bank in 2019.

Could we blame it on the assessment or teaching process in universities? Classroom teaching remains a way to tackle a structured syllabus in the presence of certified instructors, but - what is the gap that needs to be addressed and is classroom teaching worth the time or investment?

Online learning is one of the major sources where students can look up tutorials or even upload tutorials - it is not always a coming-clear agenda. Udemy offers courses of a variety, but the cost and quality?

Well, there isn't a camera to see a student. And teacher-student communication is a barrier. Plus, while there is sheer competitiveness, time-bound and live endeavours continuing in laboratories, they are missing from a course one enrols into through an online educational platform.

Clearly, the previous stats regarding the ratio of graduate vs available jobs indicate that no matter how reliably illustrious a university program in Computer Science in Bangladesh may be, the classrooms won't cut it to get the jobs.

The students need personal engagement and support, and a lack of flexible learning pace is missing from the classrooms. While peers can influence each other amidst the crises of trying to achieve both physical and mental stability, is the educational system becoming too much of a burden for the learners?

It is time to rise above the prejudices, cultural blocks, and discouraging notions that suppress personal development in both classroom and online education - if we want to achieve a robust education system by 2030 as the promise to achieve sustainable development goals.

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