The digital curriculum is still missing

As part of its blended learning plan for this year, the Ministry of Education has not designed an integrated system for e-learning that includes learning management systems and asynchronous cooperative learning with feedback, electronic follow-up and evaluation. The ministry has decided that the distance learning space in public schools will not exceed 20 percent of the teacher’s weekly time, during which the teacher and the student use “Microsoft Teams” (a tool for simultaneous face-to-face learning from a distance) or WhatsApp application or any other application, in addition to the paper activities and electronic assignments Observation. In contrast, 80 percent of teachers ’time is devoted to classroom attendance, while schools have an attendance week and a distance education week.The central digital educational content is still missing, although the Educational Center for Research and Development has finally begun to compile existing digital resources (illustrations such as dictionaries, photos, videos, power point, infograph) on global platforms (medium on which educational resources are placed) open and freely available in Arabic. And French and English in all subjects, and trying to network them with the curricula, that is, appropriate resources are being selected in the content and goals, and not the production of resources that are educationalally related to be part of the curriculum.

(Haitham Al-Mousawi)

The expert in e-learning Milad Al-Sebali, who suspended his advisory work at the educational center, “the ministry’s failure to respond to the integrated plan that we have put in place in the center for e-learning,” he said, clarified that what is happening in most schools is “distance education and not electronic education, as it does not take Given the 25 years of development that has occurred in this style of education, the professor continues to transfer knowledge to the student in one direction, just as if he is in a traditional class, and he commits himself to the number of lessons he gives in attendance, while there are different patterns of interaction with students, whether In synchronous electronic learning (direct interaction between the teacher and the student) first, synchronous.
In Al-Sebali’s opinion, there is a need to re-engineer the educational process, so that the activities that were taught in the classroom and the home activities are disintegrated, based on techniques and methods, and some time is devoted to explanation and the bulk of the discussion between the teacher and the student, and e-learning or blended learning is not an exact copy of education Attendance, especially in terms of liberation from the idea of ​​the professor’s authority or technology, and providing the student with the skills of creative thinking and critical thinking.
Al-Sebali believed that it is not permissible to hold the responsibility for preparing the digital educational content only to the professor, but rather that there should be a central content prepared by the educational center, as neither the teacher nor the school nor even the school assembly can undertake this task.
Noting that fairness among students is essential in terms of providing the infrastructure, such as electricity and the Internet, he called for flexible legislation that is not superficial for e-learning that allows creativity and development and provides a mechanism for continuous curriculum development.
While some Lebanese companies concerned with digital resources and electronic devices entered the “business” line and attacked the Ministry over the rejection of the tender costing millions of dollars, the Director of Guidance and Guidance Hilda Khoury denied that any of the “companies connected to distance learning had made a free offer and did not accept it.” ». She explained that many obstacles prevented the transition to complete remote education, “since Lebanon has not received any laptop computer from any donor country or international organization, since the schools closed in late February, although we showed willingness to reduce the number by half, and we did not get So far only positive promises in this area ». There are 8 thousand computers obtained by the Ministry of Education more than two years ago and are in warehouses due to not purchasing licenses. UNICEF has finally provided licenses and will be distributed to classrooms in public schools, in addition to the need for 800 additional computers that we have obtained preliminary approval from the UNESCO. .
In another context, El-Khoury pointed out that the Ministry of Communications “informed us that it cannot technically apply the white list to all users, including professors and students, meaning that educational hours are not counted from the bill, but we contacted the Ogero administration and promised to strengthen the speed and capacity for each user, and install an Internet network. In some of the public schools that did not have the Internet.
Regarding the conflicts in the tasks between the ministry and the educational center, especially in terms of training teachers on distance learning, El-Khoury denied that there is any intersection in the powers, “The ministry is in charge of managing learning, not content, securing digital educational resources and training teachers, which is the responsibility of the educational center entirely.” She explained that «the ministry is concerned with administration only, and the classera platform does not contain any educational content, but is related to administrative work in the directorates of the ministry and educational regions, including counting teachers’ hours and the like. She indicated that the company provided the platform free of charge for two years for formal education and one year for private education. At this time, the ministry, according to El-Khoury, can quietly put a book of conditions in this area.

The Ministry of Education has not received a laptop computer from the donors

The tasks of the center are separated from the ministry, according to George Nohra, the head of the Education Center assigned to it. The axes that the center is working on are securing digital resources for teachers to use in the learning process, training teachers to use the platform and resources, and conducting educational research, as it is currently preparing an evaluation research of previous experience in Distance learning.
According to Nahra, what the educational center has done recently is to develop an application for the official electronic book crdp e-books that will be continuously improved in preparation for it to be an interactive book. The center also produced educational guiding videos for teachers on how to use the application and about reducing curricula in terms of the standards followed. Digital resources are currently being networked with the curriculum from the first to the sixth to place them on the DLI educational platform, which allows access to free sites for a limited period, pending the creation of a “factory” to produce digital resources.
The center has a training plan for teachers on 6 topics that will be implemented starting this week and affect distance learning asynchronously, how to safely and effectively browse different topics, training on the DLI platform, complete training on Microsoft Teams, how to design remote electronic lessons with educational resources In addition to training on curriculum reduction and implementation of psychosocial support activities.

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