‘Teachers lack e-learning skills’
ZAMBIAN teachers do not have skills to provide lessons through the electronic learning platform, says Teacher Education and Specialised Services Director, Ngosa Katoti.
He said the training of teachers is predominantly that they transmit lessons face-to-face
Mr Katoti explained that this kind of training has contributed to the challenges Zambia is facing to provide lessons to pupils through the e-learning platform.
He was speaking yesterday during a presentation on Global pandemics and Zambia’s Education Sector “Modernising Teaching Methods to Build Resilience” at a virtual meeting organised by the Policy Monitoring and Research
Centre (PMRC).
“Zambia is not ready for the modernisation of the teaching methods because regarding teachers, their training is predominantly that they teach face to face. It is not easy for teachers to adapt and offer lessons through the internet,” Mr Katoti said.
Teachers, Mr Katoti said, would now be mandated to undertake a course under Information Communication Technology before graduating for them to able to provide e-lessons.
Mr Katoti said the Ministry of General Education had not yet invested much in e-learning and therefore not easy to provide the lessons through the internet platform.
This, he explained, had posed a challenge in providing infrastructure to transmit the lessons.
Mr Katoti stressed that Zambia does not have adequate infrastructure to support e-learning platform.
“We are not ready for now. Looking at infrastructure, we do not have necessary infrastructure to support future shocks but Covid-19 has been a wakeup call and we hope that between now and the future, we should be ready to provide e-lessons. We will have to invest in infrastructure,” he said.
Mr Katoti observed the need for a deliberate policy to provide learning platforms for pupils to access the lessons during and after the Covid-19 pandemic.
He also observed the need to strengthen alternative model of teaching for teachers to adapt to new ways of teaching.