Online teaching and learning as alternative route for sustainable education during and post covid-19 era in Nigeria: challenges and prospects

Abstract

The outbreak of epidemics, pandemics and other natural calamities has become an integral component of humanity. These have produced varying effects and tended to re-write the history and the lifestyle, culture, custom and tradition of communities and nations. The COVID-19 pandemic has produced the biggest disruption of education systems in human history. The global academic calendar has been thrown into a state of disarray by the Coronavirus outbreak. Most schools from basic to universities had to shut down their doors and students returned home to their parents and together self-quarantined. Many schools, colleges, and universities discontinued face-to-face teaching and learning due to school closures thus threatening the sustainability of the education system. This paper reviewed the challenges and prospects of online teaching and learning as alternative route for sustainable education during and post covid-19 era in Nigeria. The concepts of online teaching and learning (OTL), sustainable education, the role of OTL in promoting sustainable education, challenges and prospects of OTL were discussed. It was concluded that online teaching and learning is imperative if the dream of achieving sustainable education especially during emergencies is to be achieved. It recommended among others that intensive training programmes on ICT should be provided for teachers, encourage teachers to view learning as a lifelong process against one-shot terminal learning, encourage students to use different educational apps and the ministries of education, science and technology, and communication and digital economy should take steps and install ICT and online learning infrastructure in schools.