Supervising online learning

When a college switches to e-learning, and when this was never part of its strategic plan but an abrupt reaction to the COVID disruption, one big problem  may hinder the successful roll-out of e-learning: the failure by supervsiors to monitor online training. 

The failure to monitor online training can happen when supervisors (heads of departments or heads of sections) are caught up in the confusion of not having the knowledge or requisite skills to monitor online training activities. This gets excerbated when the supervisors lack basic skills for using learning management systems. This problem is often characterised or caused by the follwoing factors:

1. Mistaking the management of e-learning to be a work of IT specialists. This can cause serious harm to the training process. IT specialists should provide technical support (e.g. ensuring that the system is accessible by users, tweaking the system to make it more user friendly, performing system updates, etc),  but managing online training (e.g. ensuring that online content meets e-learning quality standards) should be the work of heads of training. They need to be as conversant with usability issues of the system as lecturers and students. Simply put, you can't manage what you don't understand! 
2. The absense of a checklist and schedule which stipulates tasks to be completed by each lecturer on the e-learning platform will leave each lecturer to do their work in their own style, at their own pace, and many will end up posting scans of bookish notes which have little or no interactive content. As an example, a simple checklist may list notes, forum disccussions, a YouTube video on a given topic, and five multiple choice questions for each topic covered in the week.
3. The lack of knowledge by supervisors concerning what constitutes e-learning pedagogies. It is important to note that effective e-learning uses tools that (a) encourage interactivity between a lecturer and a learner, and  between a learner and another learner, (b) give visual appeal to learners (e.g. videos, games, or simulations). The Internet is replete with free videos and apps one  can use to achieve this. As part of a Quality Assurance checklist, supervisors should check that learning materials satisfy these e-learning requirements.
4. Absense of an information help desk. When students are in college, they read what is on the notice board to check for announcements. And incase they have a challenge of not knowing what to do or where to go, or where to find a certain resource, there is an information desk or reception at a physcial campus to provide such assistance. Likewise, a virtual campus should have a platform which should work as a central point for students to access announcments or to post inquiries. This is not complicated, a simple Whatsapp group can be created and professionally managed to achieve this.

What all this means is that managers of training institutions need to aquiant with e-learning systems, e-learning pedagogies, and e-learning quality assurance. A good starting point would be to have strategic meetings and workshops where this has to be discussed and planned.

COVID Third Wave, This far what's the efficacy of the E-learning Vaccine?

The COVID-19 Third Wave has again disrupted schools, this time the scourge is proving more devatsting as it continues to claim an average of 50 people every day. How are colleges coping with this situation? Were any lessons learnt from the experience of the previous wave? At the time, many colleges panicked to switch to e-learning. Many of them did not have learning management systems in place. Others improvised and used the most easily accesible one, Google Classroom (you may wish to know that this year, 2021, Google has enhanced this platform to now include many LMS features that have transformed it into a serious learning management system). Now, from the time of the earlier COVID-19 waves  to-date, it will be interesting to know if: 

• Colleges were able to transform the then impromptu decisions into formal strategic plans.
• Colleges were able to incorporate e-learning into their standard operating procedures.
• TEVETA  now accepts, and has formally incorporated and communicated, e-learning pedagogies and  online forms of academic assessment.

The last item should be of foremost concern. This time we ought to be ahead of COVID-19, and instead of discussing e-learning implementations, stakeholders should have been strategising on the integration and use of proctored-exam applications into learning management systems.  A proctored exam app enables an institution to conduct an online exam securely; it has electronic tools that monitors a student's conduct, wherever he or she could be. For example, any attempt to open a new browser window during an exam will terminate a session. These systems are used by universities around the world. The systems are also used in certification exams provided by well known tech firms such as CISCO, Oracle, and Microsoft Corporation.

If you are a head of a training institution please be admonished: 

1. Experts have said COVID-19 could be an endemic, that is, it will linger for years to come. You have no option but to take e-learning seriously. When I say "seriously" I don't mean raising your voice or keeping on talking about it  during your staff meetings; this is what I mean: Be proactive and invest in resources, training, and development of standard operating procedures and quality assurance plans for e-learning at your institution.

2. Do not succumb to 'resistance to change'. Many factors can hinder adoption of e-learning. "Some students have no access to Internet", "Lecturers do not have equipment for teaching" - are these sentiments familiar? There is no problem if they come from your operational workers or your followers, but if you are a leader, be informed that when the world changed from the Hunter-gatherer age to Agrarian, it was because some people rose above the challenge of the scarcity of animals by innovating to start domesticating and repopulating them in their residential places, whilst a few others were too conservative to give up on hunting. Later,  industrialisation mechanised equipment leading to quicker methods of production; some nations were quick to adapt but many lagged behind and are still called Third World today! Simply put, change is always inevitable and it is your work, as a leader, to help your workforce adapt or they will become irrelevant to economic forces in their environment.

3. Take on a leading role. Always remember that strategic change can never successfully take course in an organisation if it is being propelled by low-ranking workers, no matter how innovative they could be. If there is no strong will from senior management to take the lead, 'Talk' instead of 'Action' is what will succeed. Secondly,  do not foolishly retreat with the excuse of being a 'BBC' (Born Before Computers); don't be naive! As long as your brain, eyes, and ears are still working, you still have the ability to learn or you risk becoming irrelevant in this fast-changing world. Take interest to understand what an e-learning system is, how it works, what products are available on the market, and what competitive benefits e-learning brings to a college. You do not need to be a computer expert to aquaint with e-learning; it is now a necessary tool that senior management at a training institution ought to aquaint with.

It is my hope and prayer that phobia for the e-learning vaccine can subside, and that managers of training institutions can provide the much needed lead for their staff to take the jab. We will overcome, take care!