COVID-19: Ensuring Continuity of Learning During Scholastic Disruption in Tertiary Institutions in Nigeria

Abstract

Issues concerning learning during educational disruption due to the Covid-19 pandemic have been the subject of many excellent journalistic accounts, but there has not been much scholarly output addressing the experience. The need to maintain social distance poses a significant challenge to the international communities particularly between populations, educators and students. Though elicited by COVID-19 pandemic, the focal point of this challenge remains how to offer learning opportunities to students while stakeholders make efforts to contain an awfully virulent pandemic. In Europe and elsewhere, technology has helped with distance learning; assisting individuals on the margins of society and those in formal economy to achieve learning objectives despite a compulsory social distance regime. In other areas of the world such as Africa, correlation between technology and affordability has become a new frontier for continuing education. Encumbrances brought about by COVID-19 have deeply subverted education, state security, sociopolitical stability and economic development, which in turn create or preserve untoward anomaly. In this light, Africa has become the ground zero of disorientation where disorganized criminal groups fester due to poor education and fewer opportunities. The article examines the effect of COVID-19 in the continuing tertiary education relations and concludes that while blended learning is conceivable in Nigeria, rural schools might not benefit from the programme due to truncated development in communication and low level of technology. The use of affordable Internet Radio is thus, recommended for Nigeria.