With the current situation of COVID-19, virtual education has become a necessity in the different Higher Education sectors worldwide.
In the Kingdom of Bahrain, the different universities have successfully adapted to this situation by involving the different education platforms of Microsoft Teams and Blackboard. This new virtual teaching has created a constructive challenge to most educators since most advocate traditional settings and methods.
Despite its challenging environment, COVID-19 offers a golden opportunity to invest more in virtual and electronic teaching in the Kingdom of Bahrain.
The first and foremost reason is minimizing cost, which is a significant economic consequence that most developed countries are currently working on. Virtual education does not require the traditional facilities that serve students, such as parking lots, classrooms, and traffic services. Of course, the result will be fewer traffic congestions and less pollution in our natural environment.
The second reason is training students as well as teachers on technology and virtual communication.
Today’s marketplace requires fresh graduates to master electronic communication mediums because most systems are now electronic.
The equation is simple, the more you are involved in technology and electronic systems, the better is your chance in the marketplace. Electronic education will assure that these students master such skills, and hence they will be more than ready to enter the market.
The third reason is assuring quality standards in the Higher Education systems. Online teaching involves recorded lectures and assignments, and hence both teachers and students are requested to show their work according to the quality assurance standards. Inline teaching will also contribute to sustaining our natural resources since it demands much less paperwork.
Like any new system, online teaching might face some resistance by the traditional school of education and educators. However, we should remember that education is changing in the 21st century, where the focus is more on knowledge construction rather than knowledge reception.
Indeed, online teaching provides an invaluable solution to cost-cutting, and it also provides a feasible platform to implement quality assurance standards of HE adequately. Therefore, I encourage the different HE sectors to engage in more discussions of further implementation of online education.
