Coronavirus has affected educational systems worldwide
Prof. Oğuz Esen, Lecturer at Department of Economics, Izmir University of Economics (IUE), reported that education was one of the leading sectors that got affected by the coronavirus pandemic globally. In his study regarding higher education worldwide, Prof. Esen reminded that 1,5 billion students and 63 million educators in all levels of education got affected.
Prof. Esen said, “Formal education (face-to-face) in approximately 87% of world population in 160 countries has been paused. 225 million out of 1.5 billion students are higher education students. They started to receive education on online platforms, which brought a new, transparent, and flexible higher education into question.”
‘Formal education moves to virtual environment’
Reminding that distance education was not a new concept and had been used both in Turkey and worldwide for quiet sometime, Prof. Esen stated that classes on a wide range of disciplines from law and fine arts to medicine and engineering, were moved to online platforms. Prof. Esen pointed that universities had to act quickly with the switching of formal education to online education, and those, who did not have this technology will have to start investing in distance education technology, and those, who already had the technology gained advantage over the others.
‘Universities will invest in virtual learning platforms’
Prof. Esen said that many of the universities would invest in this area, and a national policy would be developed to support higher education institutions about this process. Prof. Esen also stated that faculty members would have to learn more during this period and people would understand that distance education is much more than having the students watch videos online. Indicating that interactive education became more significant recently, Prof. Esen said, “It has become clearer that investing in digital technologies alone is not enough. Focusing on designing courses, appropriate pedagogy, course assessments, quality processes with that technology is very important. Right investments would pave the way for innovative processes. This way, a more transparent and flexible higher education would emerge.”
