E-learning: Private Institutions Gain as Public Varsities Battle Strike

WITHOUT doubt, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused a huge disruption in the state of education globally.

Generally, the lockdown order, which was declared on all human activities, so as to contain the spread of the virus, also disorganised school calendars and halted learning.

During the lockdown, some universities decided to be innovative by using different social media platforms, apps and creation of customised educational websites to pass on knowledge to their students.

Investigation revealed that a huge percentage of private universities in Nigeria were able to engage their students in online learning. Although their participants also faced the usual challenges of poor connectivity, lack of data, lack of smartphones, to mention a few, they did not relent in ensuring that these students were actively gaining knowledge online.

A student of Crawford University, Igbesa, Ogun State, Oghenetega Urherebrume, said since the lockdown began, she did not miss anything academically because her school resumed the online classes with the use of Whatsapp and Classmarker platforms and ended in August.

On the contrary, the National President, Academic Staff Union of Universities, Prof. Biodun Ogunyemi, said public universities couldn’t participate in online classes due to government’s failure to provide the infrastructure needed to conduct seamless online classes.

In addition, ASUU has been on strike due to the disagreement with the government over the Integrated Personnel and Payroll System and insisted that they would not engage in any teaching service until government attended to their agitations.

Howbeit, the fact remains that the state of education in Nigeria had been negatively affected by COVID-19. This is because students of public tertiary institutions have been left idling at home while their counterparts in the private schools were getting value through e-learning organised by their various schools.

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