The Sri Lankan higher educational sector has topped the South Asian region in online lessons and learning, with all universities in the country holding online classes, a recent Asian Development Bank (ADB) study has found. According to the University Grants Commission (UGC) Chairman Sampath Amaratunge, seven million students have participated in online classes since November [...]

Education

Sri Lanka leads South Asian Region in e-learning: UGC Chairman

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The Sri Lankan higher educational sector has topped the South Asian region in online lessons and learning, with all universities in the country holding online classes, a recent Asian Development Bank (ADB) study has found.

According to the University Grants Commission (UGC) Chairman Sampath Amaratunge, seven million students have participated in online classes since November 2020, and the teaching and learning process done online has topped the South Asian region.

“Without the pandemic we could never have reached this level,” said Prof. Amaratunge.

Even though the UGC did not enforce any high standards for online classes – as the lectures were open to the public on YouTube – lecturers were expected to give their best efforts in teaching their lessons, Prof. Amaratunge said.

The Chairman also said the COVID-19 situation did cause problems in terms of assessment. Because students in Sri Lanka’s rural areas lacked access to computers and used only smartphones, he said it was unethical to expect students to sit for online exams through smart phones.

Because of the situation, all state university Vice Chancellors were called for a discussion and were told to conduct an analysis of the problems within their respective universities, after consulting a range of stakeholders, including the students, Prof. Amaratunge said.

When the study ended, a circular which gave broad guidelines on how exams should be conducted was released. These guidelines were created under quality assurance standards. Finally all the state universities were able to conduct the exams, he said.

Prof. Amarathunga also said all classes were held online for all state universities, while the internet cost was covered by the Government. Data facilities were also created with the help of service providers like SLT and Dialog.

The data facilities were created without any conditions, except that the data was only used for the universities’ online Learning Management Services, and not to access WhatsApp, Viber and social media.

The assessments for the arts subjects were also conducted successfully online, according to the UGC Chairman. He said statistics showed that these students were happy with their results. However, he added that there was a problem conducting exams for the drama stream.

With regards to subjects such as medicine and physical sciences students must attend classes in hospitals and labs, but they would be separated into groups.

On a separate note, Prof. Amaratunge said the University of Jaffna, University of Peradeniya and University of Colombo were collaborating forCOVID-19 research.

He also said the University of Sri Jayewardenepura had signed MOUs with the University of Harvard and Cambridge University, in regard to collaborating on COVID-19 related research, while the University of Peradeniya and the University of Colombo had signed MOUs with European universities.

Finally, Prof. Amaratunge said due to factors, such as accommodating students in hostels, it was still not clear as to when universities would return to normal.

(Priyath Wijewardena)

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