DPS STS School Dhaka surveys parents on online learning

Since March 18, 2020, all educational institutions around Bangladesh have closed down, leading around 42 million children to be out of the educational system. Later, several schools across Bangladesh, including DPS STS School Dhaka, started conducting online learning classes through various virtual platforms.

Online learning is a new concept for Bangladesh, and schools did face issues regarding it. However, the institutions were able to overcome some initial problems, and now the teachers are finding new ways to conduct the classes interactively. Nonetheless, uncertainties did remain among numerous people about how amenable the parents were towards online learning.

To provide a clear view of parents' perceptions regarding online learning, DPS STS School Dhaka has recently conducted a survey called "Parent's Online Programme Survey Report". There were 22 questions in the survey, and it was done among 600 parents.

Regarding this, Madhu Wal, Principal, DPS STS School Dhaka, said, "We have gained many lessons from our online teaching experience. We will continue to use the online mode to support students' learning in the future, even if schools reopen with full-time classes. We also plan to use the digital learning platform for after-class teaching, ensuring students don't have to go to multiple sources after school hours to fortify their learning. We have an excellent IT team and great faculty who have come up to the ask in such a short period and have gone from 0 to 100 with the highest online teaching standards."

According to the survey, 91 percent of the parents were pleased that their children are part of the online learning programme even during a pandemic when so many children around the world are still out of the educational system. 76 percent of the parents have agreed that their children enjoy online learning and encourage them to carry on with it.

Moreover, 85 percent of the families have agreed that online learning has been able to create a sense of community among the students. Madhu Wal added to it, "This was one of our objectives and was important to us. We wanted our students to stay connected to each other and feel that they are part of a community. We didn't want them to feel alone, especially during a global crisis."

The School has provided extensive guidance sessions to teachers, parents and students alike on how to maximise learning effectiveness from this platform. The School has also continually tracked the progress of online classes, set up dedicated help desks for comprehensive IT support to parents and students, reengineered the online timetable to assist maximum participation of all students, resulting in online classes witnessing more than 90 percent student registrations.

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IUB makes the shortlist for THE Asia Awards 2020

Independent University, Bangladesh (IUB) has been shortlisted for the Times Higher Education (THE) Asia Awards 2020, under the category "Student Recruitment Campaign of the Year". IUB is the only university from Bangladesh which has been shortlisted under this category for this award among eight universities from Asia. The other shortlisted universities from Asia are; National University of Sciences & Technology from Pakistan; National University of Singapore; Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University from Japan; Southern University of Science and Technology from China; Universiti Teknologi Petronas from Malaysia and; Tokyo University of Science from Japan.

Times Higher Education (THE) launched Asia Awards in 2019 by recognising outstanding leadership and institutional performance across a range of categories in Asian higher education in all its diversity. The awards are given under 10 categories. The judges look for outstanding examples of best practice in the higher education institutions during the past 12 months and make the selection.