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By Bahk Eun-ji
Seven-year-old Lee Sae-ron was supposed to become a first grader at Eulji Elementary School in Seoul in March at the start of the new school year. Unfortunately, she has been forced to wait, and instead began her first day of school Monday by taking online lessons because of the coronavirus pandemic. Instead of meeting her friends and homeroom teacher in person, she watched pre-recorded TV programs aired on the state-run Educational Broadcasting System.
Lee said she doesn't have any idea of how a normal life at school would be and accepts the idea of attending school through an online platform as a "new normal."
"It's fun watching the educational programs and using a computer tablet to study at home instead of attending class in person. My mom said I must feel sad about not meeting new friends and teachers, but you know, I can't miss friends and teachers whom I've never met," she said.
Hong Eun-hee, 45, Lee's mother, said taking care of her daughter at home all day and helping her engage in remote learning was challenging. But she was surprised that her daughter had adapted to online school life faster than she had expected.
"The concept of remote learning is nothing new, but younger children like my daughter take to it more naturally. They are the so-called digital natives who are more familiar with digital systems than adults are," Hong said.
The outbreak of COVID-19 has brought life around the world to a standstill, including the closing of schools, and as a result the pandemic is expected to have a tremendous impact on education.
According to recent data from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, more than 1.5 billion students around the world are unlikely to have attended school or university by the third week of April.
The pandemic is leading the world to conduct a huge experiment with online classrooms. As Korea experiences a slowing rate of Covid-19 infections, it is gradually returning to normality. But the Ministry of Education made the unprecedented decision to postpone the start of the school year in March by five weeks to avoid possible mass infections. This forced students at elementary, middle and high schools to take the online classes.
Some parents and students have complained about frequent malfunctions of the learning platforms during the first few days of the digital education process. But many also agreed that there are no alternatives under current conditions.
"My friend and I have been thinking about whether there are any other ideas the government could pursue, but we agree that this is the best option for now," said Hailey Cho, a high school sophomore in Busan.
In Korea, online education has gradually gained acceptance over the last few years. Since 2014, the MOE has conducted a project promoting the use of digital textbooks in 72 schools nationwide. Participating teachers said the use of digital textbooks improved the students' motivation and problem-solving skills. In addition, more students appeared to be less distracted than those using traditional textbooks.
Changes in higher education
The winds of change provided by online education are also felt on Korean university campuses, part of a global trend as institutions of higher education worldwide adopt massive open online courses, or MOOC. These are lectures often offered by top universities, such as Harvard and MIT. The advantage of these is that students can listen, interact and learn online anytime or anywhere in the world.
The concept has become popular in Korea. The MOE launched its own version, called K-MOOC, in 2016 to make university lectures available online to the general public.
"Although it has been six years since the launch of the K-MOOC, there have only been 700 lectures uploaded from 100 universities so far," said Cho Eun-ok, a director of the higher education division at the ministry. "However, the virus pandemic will change the online education system. We expect that this will provide an opening for us to advance in online education instead of lagging behind other countries."
Cho said it is difficult to decide whether online education is better than attending lectures in person, but it offers an opportunity to use many more tools in teaching students. "The challenge is to reduce the differences between the universities that are prepared to use them and those that are not," she explained.
But university students have expressed discontent about the efforts to introduce online education during the pandemic. According to a survey of nearly 22,000 students at 203 universities and colleges in Korea conducted by the National University Student Council Network, 99 percent said they wanted a full or partial refund of their spring semester tuition, and also complained about the poor quality of the online lectures. Some students have filed petitions and held rallies against online education, saying their right to learn has been compromised.
Education experts agree that university-level online classes in Korea pose a number of challenges in terms of the network infrastructure and the lack of preparation in making a swift switch from physical to online classrooms, as well as the poor quality of the lectures themselves.
"Technical problems like securing a stable server will be easily solved, but student management or quality control are more difficult problems," said Kim Byung-jin, a chief research director at Etoos Academy, a professional education company.
Kim said that students and their parents as well as educators need time to adjust to online classes if they are to be successful.
"If we compare the framework of traditional school classes, online ones might be seen as full of problems. From the parents' point of view, it might seem that students are not focusing on their classes at all. But we have to keep in mind that their attitude toward online lectures is shaped by the styles to which they have become accustomed to, and that which is completely different," he said.
Given the fact that younger students are already used to multitasking and video content, Kim said that over the long term they are expected to adjust well to online education systems.
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