Facebook’s Social Learning Group for Undergraduate Engineering Courses: A Case Study of Emergency Remote Teaching Amid Large Digital Divide

Abstract

platform for such a fully online setup. Such exploration became crucial in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic as institutions worldwide were forced to adopt emergency remote teaching.The COVID-19 pandemic has stricken almost all countries around the world. With governments implementing lockdown and quarantine measures, regular on-campus classes in schools, colleges, universities, and other educational institutions had come to a halt suddenly for many communities. Closure of educational institutions has affected more than 1.5 billion students worldwide [1].As communities faced extended periods of lockdowns or social distancing directives, educational institutions had to think fast about alternative measures to complete the semester they were in when the pandemic closed off regular operations. With very little preparation, teachers had to adopt emergency remote learning -and the process, platform, and planning varied widely from country to country, institution to institution, and even teacher to teacher.In Bangladesh, the first official COVID-19 cases were recorded in early March, and a national quarantine was imposed on March 25, which remained in effect for two months till May 30 through a series of extensions [2]. Although lockdown measures have been relaxed to some extent from June and a limited number of workplaces, industries, and businesses were allowed to operate with strict rules for physical distancing), the government has ordered all educational institutions to withhold their on-campus activities till August 6 [3]. Bangladesh has about fifty public universities and over a hundred private universities -all of which were affected by the directive. The University Grants Commission (UGC), the government body in charge of ensuring quality in higher education for the country [4], permitted online teaching but provided freedom to the universities to make decisions on their own in terms of the extent and nature. At the time of the school closures, universities were at different points of completion of their then-rolling semester. Some universities could cease all Abstract-The COVID-19 Pandemic has forced many educational institutions worldwide to adopt emergency measures to complete the semester or school-year, which was rolling before the crisis hit. Different formal and informal Course Management Systems (CMSs) were incorporated to aid in this sudden transition to virtual classroom mode. A significant challenge that emerged in the Global South during this emergency transition was the glaring presence of Digital Divide. In this paper, we explore this situation for Bangladesh through a case study of three courses where emergency remote teaching was adopted from March to June 2020. The students enrolled were surveyed using questionnaire and the collected data was analyzed to determine the potency of Facebook Social Learning groups in Emergency Remote Teaching. Even as the emergency remote teaching phase ends in many communities, the pandemic and its effects continue and institutions worldwide are preparing themsel...

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