Online Classes: A Necessity or Mere Cruelty?

Charis King

The Lagos state university, just like other universities of its standard and calibre, have decided the best way to continue and conclude its academic calendar (for some department) is by taking its student through consecutive and rigorous online classes.

Very few students think this a perfectly sane and reasonable thing to do as the world is rapidly becoming a global village, especially during this global pandemic the world is facing, but the majority have spoken against these online classes and have described them as utterly cruel and unfair, reasons below.

Departments like the college of medicine and school of communications started online classes shortly after the country as a whole plunged into lockdown due to the uncontrollable increase the number of COVID 19 especially in Lagos state.

Not long after the great LASU employed the use of big time teleconferencing websites and applications, such as Envivo, iClass, canvass infrastructure, go to meeting App and the most frequently used, Zoom.

Students had to register or install some of these applications requiring the use of their mobile data, laptop or Phone resources, which many students would have no problem doing but how about students without these privileges? How are they expected to catch up with their peers if they themselves have been incommunicado during the lockdown?

The use of the envivo website made things a little easy as students could sign up for classes (using their school E-mails) and listen to their lectures at a later time. That was a big relief for many as it was a partial solution to the problem of data subscription; they could use midnight plans which are quite cheaper than a regular data plan. But is deprivation of sleep also fair on the students?

Envivo would have at least been manageable if it was actually used. Many students never actually received a single lecture on this Envivo platform because lecturers never uploaded their lectures there. Medical students from the schools college of medicine (LASUCOM) never had their courses available for registration on the Envivo platform in the first place. Then there was also the problem with students emails jamming with each other.

Lecturers from the college of medicine completely took control of the situation by organising classes themselves by working alongside the head of class from all 5 departments in the college. Students appreciated this development at first but later on many just gave up on it. The cost of keeping up with these classes was just too much for them to handle.

The new applications and website used were purely for teleconferencing meaning they had to be in the class at the same time as the lecturers, which also meant attending the class could not be postponed. The amount of data these applications consume is alarming and most times students have about 2 to 3 classes a day for about 2 to 3 hours, many students just couldnt keep up and had to drop out of online classes.

All these would still have been in a way bearable as students could always ask their friends about the classes and ask for clarity on classes they missed due to lack of data but many lecturers take attendance during their lectures! Taking notes of which students attended and which students did not as if it were normal classes! To top it all up assignments are given with due dates attached to them which students just have to submit because according to the lecturers these assignments carry marks that would count in their final grading.
These things are just not fair.

The school managements didnt provide phones, laptops, data subscription or electricity for its student and yet the lecturers expect the students to be readily available whenever they feel like having their classes. Some lecturers dont even provide lecture slides for their students. The school managements have to go back to their drawing boards and come up with better ways to teach the students.

Its either the schools authority use the school fees their students paid to fund their online schooling, which is unlikely, or out rightly postpone schooling till whenever students can gather in a classroom for a proper lecture, after all not all departments of the school has started lecture.

Students shouldnt have to fail because of these short comings they cant control, hopefully the school management acts on this immediately.