Education via television during the 2020 pandemic

For any developing country education is a major concern, especially in Pakistan where over 40 million of its population is under the age of 19. Millions of students in Pakistan are still out of school and quality education is a big question mark.

Back in March 2020, as academic institutions closed across the country during the Coronavirus pandemic, many students were out of school with no clear guidance on continuity of studies. Schools started opting for online classes without considering the weak technological infrastructure in Pakistan, where students do not have access to devices or the internet. With the tension rising among students and their parents, there was a state of panic.

Keeping in mind all these concerns, Government of Pakistan took a leap of faith and launched a dedicated channel to compensate the learning due to school closure. Teleschool was launched where video-based lectures for grade 1 to 12 are broadcasted to the masses. However, the content was a major issue as there was no time to create content from scratch, hence Federal Directorate of Education (FDE) engaged ed-tech companies operating in Pakistan to leverage their content. Knowledge Platform being a pioneer and a leading ed-tech provided its quality content to be aired on national television and make an impact on masses.

Television access is common in Pakistan, where internet or devices might not be very common but 70% of households have access to television and PTV is freely broadcasted without any charges. Keeping in view the need of online learning, with limited slots to broadcast the content, other mediums must be integrated. Scope of online learning has been increased in past three months and the benefit is prominent for students. As they can learn by staying safe inside their homes and benefit from quality content being aired. Similarly, this is a low-cost solution where the cost of traveling is minimized and thirdly the increased retention in terms of learning outcomes by seeing real life examples being integrated in these video lessons.

However, for self-paced learning once can always view the lessons, take the assessments and learn from games via https://www.learnsmartpakistan.org/

Share:

via tel