Letter of the Day | Blended learning: The solution to the current education crisis

THE EDITOR, Madam:

Jamaicans are currently living in what can be easily classified as the greatest challenge in the history of our education system. March 2020 saw the Government of Jamaica, like other world leaders, making the decision to close all educational institutions in an effort to contain the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. While this precautionary measure was necessary to curtail the effect of the virus, the move sent our educational system into hysteria. The Ministry of Education, Youth and Information slogan, ‘Every Child Can Learn, Every Child Must Learn’, encompasses one of Jamaica’s National Development Plan for Vision 2030; access to free education at all levels.

The World Bank’s ‘Learning Poverty’ indicator, which illustrates the percentage of children who cannot read and understand at age 10, stood at 53 per cent of children in low- and middle-income countries. The numbers are even more startling, with a high of 80 per cent for poorer countries. This pandemic has the potential to put Jamaica’s educational and other related sustainable development goals in jeopardy.

The concept of blended learning is by no means novel and is emerging as one of the most promising instructional practices in the educational settings in developed countries. Blended learning instruction combines two learning environments: traditional face-to-face instruction and online instruction. It is aimed at reducing classroom contact hours (reduce seat time) and seeks to bridge the learning gaps between the developed and the developing countries such as Jamaica. This generation of students has a keen interest in using technology and demand to use technology in teaching and learning, in and out of the classroom. Studies have outlined the benefits of incorporating technology into the classroom; however, despite this tremendous push, creating an effective learning environment with technology remains a challenge for many teachers. These challenges would include, specifically in the Jamaican setting, a lack of resources, which may be financial or material in nature. This is due largely to financial constraints on the government and society. However, this pandemic has forced many teachers to think beyond the box and employ their creativity.

The Jamaican landscape, as the rest of the world, has being using online tools to assure that lesson plans, videos, tutorials, and other resources are available for most students. We have also seen public-private partnerships between the Ministry of Education, Youth and Information and our local television and radio stations to ensure that the teaching and learning process continues. The Government has also embarked on providing community access points across the island to provide Internet and computer access in underserved communities.

Other initiatives include partnership with e-Learning Jamaica Co Ltd, the Tablets in Schools initiatives which seek to bridge the gap between technology and the traditional classroom. Other teachers have been more creative to incorporate social media, WhatsApp, Zoom, Schoology and SMS, while others went beyond the call of duty, to print the required materials and delivery them to students at home. This illustrates the resilience of the Jamaican people.

It should be noted that the introduction of blended learning across the educational sector is not to replace the teachers but rather to assist in the teaching-learning experience, and even add value to the overall experience of the teacher and the students.

A Balance

While students might enjoy the blended learning experience, they will not want their education to be exclusively traditional, that is, in a face-to-face learning environment; neither do they want a purely online format. A balance between the two (face-to-face and online) is therefore important, as each method has its advantages and disadvantages. Furthermore, the blended learning approach can be used as a viable alternative for the Government to better utilise their resources and simultaneously enforce the social-distancing guidelines as opposed to reintroducing the shift-based system in schools.

In what can be easily termed as ‘our new normal’, we cannot allow the lack of desire to accept new technologies and strategies into the teaching and learning environment to have any significant effect on the successful introduction of blended learning in the Jamaican landscape.

PATRICE R. MARANDA