TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Hybrid learning could be key to students transitioning from online to offline
We need to find a way to help students transition from the digital to the physical classroom after more than a year of online learning, and hybrid learning may be just the solution.
Change Size
Direct stimulus: A teacher speaks to her students during a weekly in-class learning at an elementary school in Binjai, North Sumatra on March 11, 2021. The classroom session is part of the hybrid learning method the school has adopted to prevent learning loss among its students. (Courtesy of/Faisal)
W
hen it comes to education, current public discourse focuses heavily on the government’s plan to reopen schools come July, when the new academic year starts. However, the discourse misses the crucial issue of how to help students in transitioning from online to classroom learning.
Students will have to adjust anew to the school environment after more than a year of at-home learning. Hybrid learning is perhaps the best solution for supporting students during this transition.
The government started its mass inoculation program targeting 181 million people in mid-January, with the hope of achieving herd immunity against COVID-19 by March 2022. Now that the mass vaccination drive is inoculating teachers, who totaled 2.7 million nationwide in 2020 according to the Education and Culture Ministry, many believe it is time to reopen schools.
However, many parents think the opposite. Extending online learning for another semester or two would not hurt the children. Their children’s safety is the main priority for parents, and they are willing to wait until herd immunity is achieved before they will let their kids go back to school.
Even if all teachers received both vaccine doses, it appears that the virus is continuing to mutate. It is difficult to predict today when the pandemic might end, which means reopening schools will put children’s safety on the line.
However, the longer children continue to learn at home, the greater the risk that students will fall behind. Losing interest in learning can occur when they have no engagement with their teachers or their peers.
Direct in-person interaction is even more critical for children in elementary school, or those aged between 7 and 12 years, an age range that has been determined to be the “concrete operational stage” for students, according to the Piaget theory on cognitive development. During this developmental stage, children need direct social experience and interaction to understand and make sense of abstract ideas. Social interaction also helps them develop communicate and comprehension skills.
For many parents, particularly working parents, supervising their children during at-home learning as they work has only added pressure. The longer that remote learning continues, the heavier the burden that parents have to bear.
In many cases, we have found parents struggling to understand the instructions for class assignments that teachers send to their children via WhatsApp. Clearly, the absence of in-person interaction is hindering the transfer of knowledge from teachers to students.
Hybrid learning is an option that government and teachers can consider during the transition to reopening schools. We have trialed hybrid learning that combines at-home learning with home visits and classroom learning, and found that this method in helps students meet the required competence standard.
Remote learning was conducted via Zoom or Google Classroom to deliver class materials to students, while home visits and classroom meetings were held once a week, for when students had to complete school exercises. In-person meetings may also be necessary in subjects like physics, such as when students must observe how heat transfers.
Ferry and Risa, who are pursuing the Teacher Certification Program at the University of Medan in North Sumatra, have respectively designed a hybrid learning program for Air Merah state elementary school in South Labuan Batu as well as a state elementary school in Binjai. The method blends online learning via Google Meet, weekly classroom learning and regular parent-teacher meetings online. They say their hybrid learning is a blend of love, patience and commitment to student development.
Certainly, hybrid learning would require teachers to go the extra mile. In addition to preparing learning materials, they would need to arrange online and offline learning schedules as well as convince parents to allow their children to attend classes in person once a week.
Schools must also invest in infrastructure by providing thermo guns, face shields, handwashing facilities with soap and good ventilation in classrooms while arranging classroom seating to keep students at a safe distance from one another. The leadership of the school principal will matter in making sure that hybrid learning succeeds.
Parents will also play a big role in this regard. Without their consent, hybrid learning cannot materialize. For this reason, Ferry and Risa intentionally included good parent communication in their hybrid learning design.
To some extent, hybrid learning will help schools to survive, particularly private schools. While private schools rely solely on student tuition to stay alive, student admissions at many private schools have declined as a result of the pandemic.
In the case of Madrasah Ibditiyah Nahdlatul Ulama elementary school in Balikpapan, East Kalimantan, a madrassa run by the country’s largest Islamic mass organization Nahdlatul Ulama, principal Gunanto asked for public donations to renovate the school, so it could comply with the COVID-19 protocols and its students could attend classes safely as part of hybrid learning.
Gunanto also used the donations to provide incentives to teachers for making home visits to help students who were having difficulty adapting to online learning. He believed that home visits were a way to show that the school cared about and loved its students, amid the fear of COVID-19 transmission.
Before the pandemic, the madrassa’s teachers all registered with BPJS Ketenagakerjaan, the state social security scheme, so they would be entitled to the government’s pandemic relief assistance.
These efforts seem to be bearing fruit, as the madrassa has been admitting new students for the new academic year.
To conclude, hybrid learning outweighs the concerns of both students and parents about the pandemic and the learning process. Once the country achieves herd immunity, hybrid learning could transition into classroom learning with little hassle.
***
Faisal is a lecturer of the Teacher Certification Program at the University of Medan and has been overseeing teaching practices in North Sumatra during the pandemic. Shinta Purnama Sarie is a communications specialist at Tanoto Foundation, an education philanthropy, and is currently completing her Montessori early childhood certificate.
