The Covid-19 pandemic has disrupted various sectors, including the education sector, all over the globe. According to UNESCO, around 1.5 billion students are currently affected by school/college closure.
Even in Australia, schools and colleges are closed in every state and territory. As a result, many teachers, parents and students have to adjust to new modes of learning like “homeschooling”, replacing the traditional teaching in the physical classroom.
Educating students at home instead of sending them to traditional and public schools is called homeschooling. It provides students with personal interaction with teachers in large classrooms. It saves our money and gives us freedom from school and colleges schedule during this Covid-19 pandemic. It also helps parents create a strong bond with their children and quality time.
Every parent wants quality education that can improve ability and moral values and education that is a fun learning atmosphere for their children. So, homeschooling has been popular these days. The main aim of homeschooling is to educate their kids. It also helps parents create a strong bond with their children and have quality time. It even provides students with the personal interaction teachers in large classrooms won’t be able to provide.
Some of the current strategies of homeschooling are as follows:
To direct the path of children’s education:
There are so many things in the world to know about rather than textbooks, and parents want their kids to appreciate differences in cultures and the need for an international language of kindness. When a family visits various locations, kids learn about that place’s culture and world.
To make siblings lifelong friends:
Some parents have one child, and some have two children. When one kid is studying textbooks at school, no one will be left alone. They will have less chance to interact with each other and might not have a good up. So, keeping siblings at home and educating them together will help them get along.
To help students learn proper socialisation and values:
For students and children’s getting along with their peers is essential. To be able to interact more with children and knowing they are in safe hands gives parents comfort. Also, schooling makes students spend more time outside than at home.
However, some challenges make homeschooling difficult and inconvenient. Some of them include:
- Homeschooling is stressful as parents must spend lots of time-solving complex problems and researching.
- We must spend a lot of money on books and other learning materials.
- It might affect students’ social life as they spend more time at home.
- Homeschooling can absorb lots of parents’ time.
In this case, we can use IT Technologies’ help to ease the problems of homeschooling. Using technologies such as virtual learning platforms and AI will not only help solve the problem of homeschooling but also help children understand better and learn.
1) Use of virtual learning: A learning experience that is improved by using computers and the internet both within and outside of the facilities of the educational organisation is called virtual learning. Online environments are where the instruction is most frequently conducted. The learning activities are conducted online. Therefore the teacher and students are geographically apart. It is a learning experience using computer software and the internet in much broader dimensions. It is usually associated with online courses or environments but has much wider dimensions. First, create an online platform where everyone can connect and use that medium to interact with teachers and students. Online assessment, discussion activities and online tests to upgrade students’ skills and monitor
student progress.
The benefits of using virtual learning are:
- Remote access to the entire world’s supply of educational services (including tutors and topics)
- Individualized instruction that considers each student’s needs, learning preferences, and degree of competency.
- A protected and secure setting for learning.
- Knowing that it is flexible regarding timing, place, and speed.
- Cost-effectiveness, timeliness, scalability, and many other factors.
2) Use of AI: Artificial intelligence in education is a new way of teaching and learning experience. It is kind of an upgrade in the technology field and education. Availability of teachers 24hr/7 is impossible. And also, parents won’t have much availability to take care of their children every time and help them in their studies. So, using AI to help students when teachers and parents are unavailable.
Some benefits of Using AI are:
- Personalisation: Solutions based on artificial intelligence can adjust to students’ educational backgrounds, learning rates, and most current educational goals. It would help students choose the suitable courses for their needs. Applications related to AI can assess students’ prior academic performance, identify their areas of weakness, and recommend the most appropriate procedures.
- Tutoring: Numerous pupils require support outside of the classroom. It would be challenging to identify teachers with enough time for these demands, whether for homework assistance or exam preparation. Students can receive service outside the classroom uniquely by using AI chatbots and tutors. Teachers would improve students’ weak areas with the use of AI techniques.
- Rapid response: Students require support from specialised professionals to solve their problems during the educational process. AI can help pupils by giving them quick answers.
The main goal of using virtual online learning and AI is to help students and teachers benefit from technology and a continuous learning environment even in pandemics like covid-19 or to make international students and online learners easier to get an education.
Things like virtual learning can replace homeschooling or the traditional way of teaching in schools and colleges. If we do not want to replace it, then we can still use this medium to help others that can’t get homeschooled or that can go to colleges and universities. Students can utilise and study from home comfort using computers and the internet either outside or inside the educational organisation. Students can also connect and interact with other students and teachers through live chat and video sessions.
The other is mainly involved in digital learning and uses algorithms to adopt digital learning and helps monitor student performance, estimating their skills and tracking their progress. When students and teachers have problems with digital learning materials, these adaptive intelligent learning technologies will help them to overcome these problems.
