5 years ago
A look into the not too distant future: Point of view from a Bahraini Academician. In December 2019, two global pandemics emerged. The first one is, of course, the COVID-19 outbreak with so far over 15 million reported cases around the world and around 639,000 deaths. The second epidemic is no less serious, having disrupted the lives of over 2 billion students around the world. It is the ‘epidemic’ of internet-based online distant learning – a shift from the traditional teaching in closed classrooms. Both these pandemics have changed lives everyone around the world forever. We are unlikely to ever go back to the way we used to live, work, think, communicate and study before the COVID-19 era. Recent reports suggest that the Coronavirus pandemic is likely to reach its plateau in most countries within the coming few weeks and as in all previous outbreaks, it will start to fall. However, in my opinion, the online teaching epidemic will continue to rise and rise and may never decline again; as educational institutions have discovered that in comparison to classroom, face to face lectures, teaching via internet is in many circumstances more effective. It increases the retention of information and is […]