HIGHER education institutions must be equipped with the tools and materials for online learning, said former education minister Maszlee Malik.

Maszlee said to do this the government would need to allocate more for education than the current RM50.4 billion, which is the biggest chunk of Budget 2021.

He said lecturers were finding it difficult to come up with their own materials to teach online because there were no proper tools to be used.

“If the government is not going to develop its own software to assist, then they should fund universities and colleges to buy the software from abroad,” he said in a recent interview with The Malaysian Insight.

He said with better teaching materials and tools, it would allow lecturers to collaborate with other educators abroad.

“Some of these lecturers are accustomed to the conventional way of teaching and what more, our lectures or lectures have not been trained for a situation like this,” he said.

He said because lecturers were not exposed to online learning, it was important that those responsible took a radical approach to help these universities.

“I did ask our Minister of Higher Education to ask the Finance Ministry for an additional allocation to be given to the universities to help lecturers develop their own teaching material.

“Whether the government likes it or not, it must cooperate with the private sector, or other developed universities to assist these lecturers,” he said.

Maszlee said the way online classes were being taught right now was rather counterproductive. 

“But at the moment, the way I see it, because I have kids studying at university and at home, they are depending mostly on the online classes, which I think is rather counterproductive,” he said.

“If you’re dependent on online classes, I mean, when you are listening to lectures on the laptop screen or your desktop screen, I don’t think you have the ability to focus more than an hour, some of them fell asleep, even after a few minutes,” he added.

“So what more for the classes that have been conducted for more than two or three hours. So online classes alone are not sufficient,” he said.

“This is where I strongly believe that additional budget should be given to the universities either to develop their own online teaching content, which they can buy from professional content providers, or they can purchase it from other universities abroad,” he said.

Reconsider school closures

Maszlee also urged the government to reconsider its blanket school closure which will end on January 20.

He said this was because the country was at risk of having a “lost generation” of students who would not have attended school for a few months.

They are at risk of losing two to three years worth of learning experience, he added.

He said the government should engage with school principals and teachers around the country to find out how to avoid a school closure.

While education minister, Maszlee implemented several progressive policies such as abolishing examinations for Year One to Year Three students in order to have a more “learning-centred” approach.

He also implemented a free breakfast programme at schools to ensure all students, especially the B40 children, wouldn’t go hungry while learning.

The registration process for children without citizenship into government schools was simplified, allowing many children to get their wish to finally go to school.

A total of 427 stateless and undocumented children were allowed to go to school in 2019.

Maszlee’s 20-month tenure, however, was cut short when he resigned earlier this year, just a few months before the collapse of the Pakatan Harapan government. – November 22, 2020.