An effective alternative to extra lessons?

Oct 20, 2010 Letters

Dear Editor,
I recently attended ‘Guy Expo’ and while I was there I got a free demo PC CD-Rom showing how Computer-Assisted Learning (CAL) works. At first, I thought it was just a $200 ‘high-tech’ movie that a street vendor was promoting and my children might find entertaining. When I got home, I inserted it into my disk drive and … Voila! Click-n’-learn!
To tell the truth, I am impressed. It is easy to use and navigate. And it works! The maths I did in school donkey years ago was painlessly and refreshingly presented in a way that I got an ‘Aha!’ moment. ‘This is it!’ My 16-year-old daughter who attends a secondary school in Georgetown and was struggling to get her head around ‘functions’ shouted: ‘This is cool …’
I decided to call up the creators of the programme to learn more. They gave me a flyer along with a DEMO of a full-featured version.
As I understand it, a group of highly qualified educators (Masters Degrees) and subject-matter specialists, e-learning developers and IT Specialists) have come together to form a small local business to create and develop a series of multimedia interactive e-learning courses for English, Mathematics and Information Technology as an alternative to extra-lessons and to fill the shortfall in the delivery of the full contents of the syllabus in the classroom.
The Kaieteur News, October 11, 2010 edition reported: Minister of Education slams extra-lessons “A culture has developed, whereby, extra lessons are actually being forced in a very subtle way on students in our school system,” said Minister of Education Shaik Baksh. According to the Minister, this development is not only unacceptable but is in fact an unnecessary move. “I do not see why schools like Queen’s College and Bishops, among other schools, where they get the cream of the students or the top performers. Why are extra lessons needed?”
Indeed, the Minister is right. With the continuing poor performance by students writing the core subjects— English, Mathematics and Information Technology at the CSEC and CXC levels— there is a growing need for a more effective method of teaching and learning these subjects.
A ‘one-off explanation’ in the classroom is not enough. A ‘once-only’ term test is not enough.
While the old traditional classroom-based method with its ‘chalk-n’-talk’ approach and its emphasis on ‘rote learning’ and the ‘passive absorption of information’ from the ‘figure of authority in front of the classroom’ worked in the past, today, that method is no longer the most effective given the short‘attention-span’ and increasing ‘distractions’ of the average student.
For a student to learn, he or she must ‘attend’ to what he /she is are doing. The programme ensures that students ‘pay attention’ by being ‘engaged in the learning process’ because of ‘time-on-task’. Added to the fact that some teachers may not be delivering the full course to the student in his or her classroom, there is a need for reinforcement of what the student learns in the classroom. Computer-assisted learning provides ‘prompt feedback’ and as you know feedback is one of the drivers of motivation
Recent technological developments however, together with government’s policy of computerizing secondary schools, offer schools an additional method for teaching and learning. Computer-Assisted Learning (CAL) continues to increase in the classrooms of the developed and developing countries. Some of the benefits of CAL include emphasis on active engagement in the learning process, enrichment of the learning experience, encouragement of greater student independence and task-based teaching.
More and more students the world over are using some form of computer-assisted learning to help them with their studies, whether it is to learn a foreign language, economics, mathematics, English or whatever. In fact, reports indicate that most of the students, at both the High School and College level, in the developed world, use their computer at home to assist them in their studies.
John Langevine

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