President Nana Akufo-Addo announced a ban on all public gatherings in the country after recording some cases of the pandemic coronavirus (COVID 19).
With the education sector being no exception, the government tasked the Education Ministry to provide cutting edge solutions to students while they stay at home.
Various online study platforms have, thus been created where students on all levels in the country can learn from.
Pulse.com.gh has taken the time to ask some 10 students their experience with e-learning and their responses are amazing.
- David Ovuike
The experience is the worst. You need a good internet, not just a good internet but also a good phone that takes 4G data bundles.
In cases where you don’t touch your phone for a few hours, you may have just missed an IA.
I wonder how students in areas with bad internet survive. People don’t have laptops and are forced to learn with their phones. Some phones are equal to no phone.
- Onajah Samuel
It is good to some extent because I can choose to listen to lecture audios anytime and anywhere I want. I mean it is more flexible than being in school.
The bad side is that it is so easy to forget that you are a student and for family and people around you to recogniSe that and give you the time you need.
- Margaret Boamah
E-learning is not a bad idea but the challenges make it bad.
The workload at home, phone issues, network issues and giving out slides without explanations are really making it difficult for some of us.
- Suleimana Issifu
The e-learning isn’t helping, especially for me.
I am a type who can’t learn at home and the place where I live is not private but rather a public place.
As I speak, I am at the site with my uncle and there is no time for me to sit and learn.
I am always running errands and at night too I get exhausted so I end up sleeping.
For network issues, I don’t want to talk about it. Am using a 6G RAM and still facing network challenges.
- David Bright Nii Ayi Hayford
So e-learning has both advantages and disadvantages.
To begin with the advantages, students are able to get their course materials posted by the lecturer. Notes are given in article, presentation slides, audio and video formats.
Also, it serves as a medium of transfer of assignments from the lecturers to the students, and vice versa.
Now with the disadvantages, we all know and experience the network challenges here in this country despite the network service provider you have.
These network challenges prevent students from having clear and free flow lectures online with the lecturer, and since there is a limit, students don’t fully understand what is being lectured.
Also, students have to be switching from one network to the other, buying airtime day in and day out to make sure they are able to partake in the process.
To add up, not all students have the required or necessary device to enable them to partake in the e-learning.
Not to forget that, since we home there is a minimum concentration to this e-learning policy.
In conclusion, the number of disadvantages outweighs the number of advantages. This simply means that e-learning is a very bad experience for students.
- Prisca Djabang
The assignments keep piling up. If we were to be in school, the number of assignments wouldn’t be as much as we have now.
And lecturers are just rushing to finish teaching the course. They just give students PDFs and slides without finding out whether students really understand or not.
- Bamfo Edmund
Charley, it is bad.
They should give us A and stop stressing us.
- Joses Mensah
It’s been cool but stressful.
Homeworks have been stressing me and there isn’t any better explanation for these assignments.
- Ama Nyaniba Yamson
All video and voice notes left on the e-learning platform for us to download and study from that is quite a problem due to the network issues.
For me the e-learning doesn’t help at all, normal classes are way better than e-learning.
- Clarence Pappoe
E-learning for me is awesome because you can learn remotely due to its ubiquitous nature. That is as a result of the nature of the Internet.
No matter where you are in the world you can learn provided you have Internet access. There is no stress on me to be in a classroom from morning to evening.