The COVID-19 pandemic has altered the course of history. Because of the virus’s nature, and notably the way it is spread, it has affected human behavior, relationships, and lifestyles and has had significant ramifications on the economic, political, and cultural landscapes of countries all over the globe.
As a result, poverty, discrimination, and inequalities have been exacerbated in many parts of the world, not only because COVID-19 appears to be affecting poorer communities more than richer communities, but also because of the measures taken by states to control the spread of the virus, which have primarily restricted freedom of movement through the imposition of community quarantines, lockdowns, and curfews in many parts of the world. As a public health emergency, the COVID-19 pandemic takes precedence above anything else.
In many cases, schools, colleges, and other institutions have been forced to close for good reason. Because of the situation, officials are forced to choose between shutting schools to reduce contact and save lives and keeping them open to enable people to continue working and preserve the economy. Many families throughout the globe are experiencing serious short-term disruption because of home schooling; it not only has a significant impact on the productivity of parents, but it also has an impact on the social and educational development of children. The delivery of education is shifting online on a scale that has never been seen before. Student assessments are also being moved online, resulting in a great deal of trial and error and uncertainty for everyone involved in the process.
Many evaluations have been canceled outright. It is important to note that these disruptions will not only be a short-term problem but will also have long-term effects on the impacted generations and will almost certainly exacerbate inequality. Educating oneself is the most effective public policy instrument available for raising one’s abilities. While school time may be enjoyable and can help children develop social skills and social awareness, from an economic standpoint, the greatest benefit of a kid attending school is that it boosts his or her ability. Even a very short length of time spent in school has this effect, and even a relatively short period of time spent absent from school will have ramifications for skill development. Can we, however, predict how much the COVID-19 stoppage will have an impact on learning? Not exactly since we are in a new environment.
However, we may utilize prior research to gain an idea of the scale on which it is measured. It may come as a surprise to learn that there are significant variances in the number of hours spent teaching in different nations. The shutdown of schools, colleges, and universities not only causes disruptions in the learning process for students all over the globe, but it also occurs at a critical assessment time, resulting in many exams being postponed or cancelled altogether. Internal evaluations are likely seen as less significant, and many have been canceled outright in recent years. However, their purpose is to provide information about the child’s development to his or her parents and instructors. If this information is lost, it might cause a delay in the identification of both high potential and learning challenges, which can have negative long-term effects for the kid. It is important to note that the lockdown of institutions has an impact on more than just internal judgments.
For example, all the tests for the most important public credentials are available. Depending on how long the shutdown lasts, we will most certainly see similar steps taken in other parts of the globe. While using “predicted grades” as an alternative to the cancelled assessments is an option, it should be noted that these are frequently inaccurate and that, among high achievers, the predicted grades of students from disadvantaged backgrounds are consistently lower than those from advantaged backgrounds. Another option is to replace blind examinations with instructor evaluations as a last resort. Evidence from a variety of situations indicates systematic differences between unbound and blind assessments, with the direction of the bias generally determined by whether the kid belongs to a group that traditionally does well in the examination. Consider the following scenario: if females typically outperform boys on a topic, an unblinded appraisal of a boy’s performance is likely to be negatively prejudiced.
Because such evaluations are employed as a prerequisite for admission to higher education, the shift to unblinded subjective assessments may have long-term implications for the advancement of women and minorities. In higher education, many institutions and colleges are abandoning conventional tests in favor of online assessment methods to improve student performance. Since this is a new topic for both instructors and students, it is possible that assessments will have a bigger measurement error than usual. It has been shown in studies that companies classify candidates based on educational credentials such as degree categories and grade point averages. To counteract this, the rise in noise in the applicants’ signals has the potential to diminish the matching efficiency for new graduates entering the labor market, resulting in poorer wage growth and greater job separation rates.
This has a negative impact on both the individual and the larger society. However, the Filipinos’ creativity and perseverance were displayed in the face of the epidemic, despite all the obstacles they faced. Students were prompted to take on these problems because of societal expectations to mobilize the efforts of diverse sectors to combat the epidemic in question. Collaboration and partnership between researchers, scientists, and practitioners in the health and social sciences, as well as in engineering, the arts, and humanities, has intensified to generate the knowledge necessary to develop timely, relevant policies and programs, as well as projections, strategies, products, and inventions. It was possible to turn laboratories, hospitals, offices, places of employment, and even individual houses into places of discovery and invention, creativity, and resourcefulness, proving that “necessity is the mother of change and innovation”. This may be true in many situations. By Jonalyn Valdez
Reference:
The Rise of Online Learning During the COVID-19 Pandemic | World Economic Forum. (2020, April 29). World Economic Forum. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/04/coronavirus-education-global-covid19-online-digital-learning/.
