By Nathaniel Nartey
Government has been urged to make online learning platforms an integral part of Ghana’s Educational system. This is because the Covid-19 pandemic has forced teaching and learning to move online due to restrictions.
The University of Ghana, University of Cape Coast and the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) have been identified as the only public institutions of higher learning in the country with adequate ICT infrastructure to do full time online teaching and learning.
Speaking at the 7th Annual Public Lectures of the Baraka Policy Institute in Accra, IT Consultant Dr. Mohammed-Sani Abdulai bemoaned the situation where only three of the Traditional Public Universities have the requisite IT infrastructure for effective teaching and learning.
Education Consultant Annis Haffar meanwhile, raised concerns about the situation where teachers are being left out of the ICT education process.
The Annual Baraka Policy Institute Public lectures focused on the use of technology for teaching and learning in an era of covid-19.
After an analysis of Ghana’s educational response to covid-19 compared with Singapore, Speakers at the forum agreed that Ghana is still lagging behind in the use of ICT technology for teaching and learning.
The speakers agreed that covid-19 has revolutionized the use of digital technologies and mobile apps in higher education institutions in the country.
IT Consultant and President of the Lakeside University College, Ghana, Dr Mohammed-Sani Abdulai addressed the state of ICT infrastructure in the Country’s Universities and their readiness to fully move into online teaching and learning if need be, as the pandemic continues.
”When it comes to bandwidth for connectivity the 3 old Universities UG, UCC and KNUST have exceeded the minimum threshold to enable it to deliver instructions in real time across board for students but the other Universities are catching up. What we are trying to do is through the Ghanaian Academic Research Network to do bandwidth appreciation on wholesale for distribution to all the Universities and try to get all the Universities onto this platform for delivery of instructions”.
Education Consultant and Former member of the GES Council, Annis Haffar spoke about the misuse of the internet by students.
“People use the internet for all sorts of things like sending happy birthday messages, but they will never use it for their education because they want someone else to do it for them, and that is sad”.
Chairman of the Baraka Policy Institute Na’am Alhassan Andani called for the remodeling of Ghana’s education system to reflect modern ICT trends.
The 7th Annual Baraka Policy Public Lectures was on the theme “Navigating Effective Teaching and Learning in the Post Pandemic era”.
