A research titled ‘Digital Education in Covid Era’ has revealed that eight in ten children in Nigeria representing 84percent, who switched to remote learning due to the pandemic prefer in-person education.
The research done by Kaspersky and aimed at evaluating student performance during enforced distance learning shows that children complained about a lack of in-person communication with their peers between classes.
It also shows that many respondents dislike learning online because of having to spend so much time in front of a screen (60%) and frequent technical problems (67%). For 29% of students, it is more difficult to understand educational materials with remote learning compared to offline classes. Less than a third of students (16%) still noted that they liked remote learning better.
Commenting on the research, David Emm, Principal Security Researcher at Kaspersky noted that the required transition to remote learning during the pandemic has been a real challenge for children, parents and teachers, alike, stressing that most probably distance learning will stay with us as a substitution for the usual classes to one extent or another.
“Despite the fact that according to our research both – parents and children prefer offline learning rather than online, it’s important to introduce various digital and interactive elements into the educational process and improve digital literacy level of children and their parents, as well as teachers,” he argued.
According to the research, the hardest subjects for children to learn remotely are the exact and natural sciences: mathematics (72%), chemistry (42%) and physics (38%). As for parents, 52% stated they don’t want to continue this learning format after the pandemic, and 25% noted a general decline in the quality of education as its main drawback.