Bambolim: Pinnacle, the initiative created by the Goa university students had their scheduled discussion today on the topic “Uncertainties in education due to Covid 19,” the discussion started with moderator Arya Prabhudessai speaking about several discussions conducted by Pinnacle in the last 2 years.
“The current scenario of education is something that is not only affecting our state but also affecting the world today,” says Arya Prabudessai, highlighting major points of the education system since the pandemic when it comes to online and offline mediums and the struggles of the teaching phase.
The first speaker Professor Nagendra Rao started on the note of his experience of using online mediums to educate his students as compared to face to face teaching, creating problems for both the students and the teachers like the lack of interaction, the non-credibility of learning, and understanding what is being taught and majorly the lack of strong bandwidth with which these online classes need to be held. “The major problem I face as a teacher is how do I conduct the exams, as our technology is not as advanced yet.” stated Prof. Nagendra Rao.
Noel Goes, the second speaker on the panel highlights points on the uncertainty of the kind of students that will emerge after these online classes should they go on for years until their graduation. Not only in terms of marks but also considering other factors that teach a student to be further presented into society and their careers. Noel Goes further stated, “When a question is asked to the student who says he/she know the answer but evidently at the time, the network seems to fail to result in the question not being answered and hence gets very monotonous from there.”
Shrinath Bhosale, being a software creator-focused more on the digital part of the education system giving an example of a video of his that went viral which was along the lines of “Should exams be canceled?” Receiving many different comments, Shrinath speaks of his experience as the exam cancellation circular was issued and the responses of the students were dancing and joyful in glee to the news while claiming only a few days early to be stressed and facing anxiety because of exams. “I feel they are not happy to save their life’s from covid but from actually being able to escape from studies”.
Darina Lobo the first student on the panel to start the discussion from a student’s perspective stated “I’m a little disappointed with Exam being postponed or canceled because I study to learn, my career is going to be in the field of teaching. As a teacher, I don’t know what kind of teaching I will impart to my students and that is my biggest uncertainty.”
The other student, Sasha Baretto speaking on the reach of online classes and its mass to students of urban and rural, stated “I think This is a very ideologic notion that online education is accessible to even a person sitting in the most remote of places but a major problem is the digital divide that has been surfaced is that we are shifting to fiber optics servers where people in villages don’t have access to not even a 2G or a 3G to be even able to hear an audio lecture.”
Emannuel De Noronha our final student on the panel focused on topics of the pros and cons of offline and online studies and gave a very important point of mental health in this generation of students where the stress and anxiety pile up from education. “Not everybody ends up having the same understanding or feel of a subject or a topic. In my case, I’m a mass com student and we have a lot of practical subjects like photography, video editing and so on, so in such cases, the understanding is limited theoretically but that practical learning is very much needed for subjects like these.”
Among the discussion, questions, and a lot of knowledgeable and rewarding answers, based on a few topics the panel put up polls for the public to decide and vote based on their opinions. Some of the few were the ones based on questions like resources provided by the government in terms of education since the beginning of the pandemic, to which more than half of the public voted for a No the government has not provided while the rest remain undecided.
Another question asked was the experience of online classes by either a teacher, student, or even a parent or guardian; to which half of them responded with online classes needing improvement while the rest were on either side of online classes being good enough and horrible.
