Digital learning among Kindergartens during the Covid-19 Pandemic
Kindergarten are those classes that mainly prepares children for first grade. The children in kindergarten can be assumed to be between 3 to 6 years old (Education in the UAE, 2022). At Kindergarten level, the kids get an opportunity to understand that a school is a place of learning and working. Children also learn about respecting others rights, sharing with others, turn taking, and looking after themselves. At Kindergarten, language always takes the center stage. The students are exposed to reading skills at the very basic level trough the follows; introduction of rhyming words, learning of poems, narration classical stories. In addition, introduction of numbers, vocabulary development, joining letters to form a whole word, and relationship between letters and sound are all introduced at kindergarten level of education (Kindergarten Introduction, 2020).
E-learning is an electronically based learning that enables the anyone to learn anywhere at any time regardless of the presence of physical barriers. Before COVID-19 pandemic, E-learning was growing at 15.4% around the world in educational institutions without pressure on the institutions to speed up the process (Stub, 2020). But when COVID-19 pandemic started, most institutions started focusing on e-learning as the major mode education to up to 60% of education being e-learning (COVID-19 Educational Disruption and Response, 2020). The switch to massive e-learning in cities like Dubai in UAE was majorly in a move to protect teachers and staff. Kindergarten students surprisingly had a great recovery from the virus. To a larger extend, the children less than 10 years barely showed signs of the virus when infected.
In the past decades, e-learning has been observed as the fastest, and more flexible mode of learning regarding the pace at which one studies, time and place of study. It provided more adequate access to a broad range and large amounts of information at low costs. In the growing global community, several educational institutions, government agencies, and corporations tend to promote digital learning due to the shift from physical class learning to online learning (Huang, 2020). This has been facilitated with the new advent of new technology that promote interdependence and collaborations among the learners. However, recent researchers have attempted to find out the quality of e-learning educational programs pinpointing out the level of social engagement and presence. According to (Foti, 2020) , some of the challenges of e-learning include lack of physical interactions and participation between the teacher and the learners and delayed responses and feedbacks from the learners.
Several scholars have criticized ad debated on the kindergartener’s digital learning. E-learning for kindergarteners has risks that affects the learning capability of children such as physical health problems, video addiction, online related dangers and risks, and social isolation (Foti, 2020). However, the parents have an essential role of regulating and preventing harms of online activities to their children and setting up rules and monitor how the kindergartens use social media. More digital learning programs have been established to provide support for all kindergartens including children with disabilities and those leaving in disadvantaged or remote areas to ensure that they both have access to flexible digital learning. Digital platforms provide the personal, social, and cultural artifacts that are essential for inhibiting the multimodal life of a child. Thus, teachers, learners, and parents should promote it to promote multimodal learning ecology for the kindergartens.
Impacts of Digital Learning on Kindergarten during the Covid-19 Pandemic
Worldwide, many schools were closed during the Covid-19 pandemic to prevent the spread of the infection. Approximately, 1.6 billion learners were affected by the outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic increasing the number of unenrolled learners. As a result of closure of the leaning institutions, the government agencies, teachers, and education policy makers had to find an alternative means to physical learning to ensure that children have their rights to access education. Several education systems adopted digital learning which included learning materials such as television, radios, laptops, and use of smartphones until effective vaccines to Covid-19 is made available. Other schools opted for social distancing and isolation of the infected individuals to prevent the spread of the disease. However, this was not effective until most of the learning institutions came up with policies to maximize the effectiveness of digital learning. All learners and teachers were supposed to switch to e-learning which would result into optimal results. However this was achieved since most of the remote and disadvantaged areas in Dubai such as Hatta, AlAweer, and Al Habab experienced many difficulties to access digital learning (Burwell, 2021). This implies that digital learning was only available for children having access to the learning materials, children from the low income families were highly disadvantaged.
Another challenge of digital learning is that children do not get sufficient instruction from their teachers; most of the kindergartens do not have the ability of grasping instructions from an online platform, face-to face interaction is the only means of teaching this these children. Young children cannot stay online for ore than an hour learning (Andreevich, 2020). They require free time to socialize and interact with others to facilitate effective learning. For instance, teaching mathematics among kindergartens via online platforms is more challenging; since kindergartens are children who are being introduced to learning systems, they need physical learning and interaction with their teachers for easy and effective learning. Young children tend to receive inadequate instructions while learning using the online platform (Andreevich, 2020). This is caused by a variety of reasons such as the quality of the devices used, lack of infrastructure, inadequate preparation of the teachers and schools since the outbreak of the infection was abrupt and lack of curriculum guidelines. Digital learning was developed with the sole purpose of preventing the spread of Covid-19. However, its effectiveness was distracted in many occasions such as lack of the basic digital skills among the teachers and the learners made them unprepared to embrace the new learning technology easily (ABDELRAHMAN) This leads to the difficulty of adapting to the online teaching since digital learning depends of the competency of the teacher and the technology incorporated in the pedagogical practices. Inadequate learning instructions reduces learning outcomes among learners. Educational institutions and teachers should ensure that the pedagogical practices should correspond to the digital techniques used for learning, the digital literacy, learner needs, and competencies to ensure that the students remain focused within their field of study.
In the past decades, there have been debates on the beliefs and attitudes of the parents on digital learning among the young children. Some of the parents appreciates the importance of the digital services and learning among the kindergartens while another parents do not support digital learning among kindergartens. According to (Al Sehli, 2021) parents have a positive attitude towards digital learning among kindergartens since it enables them to acquire essential technical skills and they should be taught on how to use the digital platforms to promote their academic development and their future employment opportunities (Al Sehli, 2021). Digital learning provides earners with new ideas, knowledge, and learning. It helps children to develop their social competencies, learning competencies, self-expression, and language (Ward, 2019). Most children will explore games and watch videos on their digital devices which are essential. Some of these videos and games will promote how they socialize with other people around them and many others (Al Sehli, 2021). They will learn how to communicate well with others and promoting their self-expression and language skills. Even though digital learning has several advantages among the kindergartens, it also have some disadvantages.
Parents’ Perspectives on Digital Learning among Kindergartens during the Covid-19 Pandemic
The disadvantages of digital learning among the kindergarten include the risks such as the adverse health effects and unrestricted use. Most parents are worried on the impact of digital use on the health of their children. (Giannakopoulou, 2021) suggests that the increasing number of digital use have raised concern on the uncertainty of the device use; embracing the use of the digital devices among children may be beneficial and harmful to their health which may make some parents unable to afford restricting them. For instance, high income families are able to employ a broad range of strategies and practices to control restrictions for the use of the digital devices and spend more on promoting offline activities for their children which may limit most of the digital devices at home.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, most countries in the UAE fully participated in the stay home campaign. Since education in the UAE is a vital priority, the country provided adequate digital learning platforms which provided people with opportunities to learn new skills (Raji, 2019). A wide range of platforms were made available for all people at no cost. For instance, the kindergartens were provided with a variety of digital platforms which include platforms for coding new languages. There is a national geographic online platform where kindergartens are provided with the opportunities to visit a virtual safari website for free. This platform has videos which and articles on a variety of animal species such as amphibians, reptiles, and mammals. The platform also consist of the explore option where young children can read more on the natural world. Finally, it has a series of games that these kids may enjoys each time they are on the website. Another platform is the code academy which comprises of the coding languages such as JavaScript, C++, html, and python. This website is free for all individuals who are interested in online learn in Dubai. It is designed for people with no experience on programing and coding languages and have a variety of assignments. However, this website is not effective for kindergartens since they are educational beginners with no experience in any field (Moghazy, 2020). It may be effective for use by adults mostly and students of higher learning. This platform includes subjects such as data science, game development, and web development. This platform is more essential in digital learning since it allows the learners to apply the new skills they learn in classroom in the real life situation.
Madrasa is also a digital platform used in online leaning in Dubai during the outbreak of corona virus. It is mainly designed for people speaking Arabic languages and contains about five thousand videos (Tamim, 2018). Kindergarten Arabic speakers can learning through this platform. However, the platform is commonly used for teaching high school subjects such as chemistry, physics, mathematics, and general sciences. This platform is more friendly and fun and can make more learners to enjoy learning using it. According to Sheikh Mohammed, learning results into a bright future which begins from the classroom, thus, online learning can be used to bridge the gap of knowledge that exists in the Arabic world. Funbrain is another digital learning platform that is based on games designed for kindergartens and students to grade eight (Raji, 2019). It offers free access to creative online games, educational games, video, and mathematics zones. It has games, comics, and books that helps children to develop their problem solving skills, reading skills, and mathematical skills. Finally, there is a duolingo digital platform for online learning. This one is designed for the kindergartens and he adults (Moghazy, 2020). It involves premium subscriptions on monthly basis but can also be accessed freely.it has thirty-five languages such as Gran, French, and Spanish. Duolingo provides its leaners with the opportunity for choosing their levels of learning for example, the beginner level, intermediate, and expert level.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, kindergartens experienced several challenges in their learning process and even learning electronically. Tis led to delay in learning activities in many countries including Dubai. Most of kindergartens require physical learning where they can interact with others physically and their teachers too. Covid-19 affected all development sectors in Dubai including the education sector. As a result of the outbreak, many learning institutions implemented digital learning across all learning institution; the kindergarten institutions, schools, colleges, and institutions of higher learning. However, invention of digital learning was a disadvantage to the teachers who had experience on electronic learning since they had nothing to contribute to during electronic learning implementation (Coman, 2020). Additionally, most teachers experienced many challenges while executing online classes specifically for the kindergartens.
Most of the teachers were used to the face-to-face learning when it comes to teaching kindergartens and they lacked adequate skills in this field. The adverse impacts of digital learning among kindergartens made many parents unwilling to support the idea of electronic learning among the kindergartens. During the outbreak of Covid-19, electronic learning was implemented to support stay home learning and stop spread of the disease. However digital learning among kindergartens in Dubai has several impacts. Many studies have focused on the parents’ perspectives on the electronic learning among kindergartens, the available free digital platforms, and digital learning among kindergartens during the outbreak of Covid-19. These studies are limited to the impacts of digital learning among kindergartens during the outbreak of Covid-19 in DUBAI. This is the gap that the current study seeks to fill.
This project proposal seeks to find out the impacts of digital learning on kindergartens during the outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic in Dubai.
- To examine the impacts of digital learning on kindergartens during the Covid-19 pandemic.
- To examine the extent of digital learning among kindergartens during the Covid-19 pandemic
- To examine the perspectives of the parents on digital leaning among kindergartens during the Covid-19 pandemic
- To examine the digital learning platforms among kindergartens during the Covid -19 pandemic.
- What are the impacts of digital learning on kindergarten during the Covid-19 pandemic?
- What are the extents of digital learning among kindergartens during the Covid-19 pandemic?
- What are the perspectives of the parents on digital learning among kindergartens during the Covid-19 pandemic?
- What are some of the digital learning platforms among kindergartens during the Covid-19 pandemic?
The findings of this research proposal will be of great significance to the policy makers in planning of the curriculum considering the ICT skills of the teachers and access to electronic and infrastructure resources at can be used in the development and invention of electronic learning. Additionally, the findings of this study will be essential for institutions and teachers who engage learners in electronic learning. They are able to provide the teachers who lack adequate skills to promote electronic learning. From the findings of this study, learning institutions, teachers, and parents are able to appreciate the importance of digital learning across all learning levels and foster collaborations among teachers in the technological ability development. The government of Dubai will also be able to provide enough resources to support electronic learning among kindergartens particular for students who experience difficulties to access them; mostly those from remote and disadvantaged areas of Dubai. Finally, the research findings of this study will build knowledge from the existing sources on the impacts of digital learning among kindergartens which will be resourceful for other researchers who may be interested to venture into a similar study.
- Electronic learning: is an electronically based learning that enables the anyone to learn anywhere at any time regardless of the presence of physical barriers
- Kindergarten: are those classes that mainly prepares children for first grade
- Digital online platforms: are devices used for electronic learning
- Disadvantaged areas: refers to the remote or rural areas of Dubai which do not have access to resources for electronic learning.
Even though electronic learning has become increasing worldwide, it remains a challenging task to teachers and kindergartens. Health related problems is among the impacts of electronic learning among kindergartens during the outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic. . However, this was not effective until most of the learning institutions came up with policies to maximize the effectiveness of digital learning. All learners and teachers were supposed to switch to e-learning which would result into optimal results. However this was achieved since most of the remote and disadvantaged areas in Dubai such as Hatta, AlAweer, and Al Habab experienced many difficulties to access digital learning (Burwell, 2021). This implies that digital learning was only available for children having access to the learning materials, children from the low income families were highly disadvantaged.
Secondly, children do not get sufficient instruction from their teachers; most of the kindergartens do not have the ability of grasping instructions from an online platform, face-to face interaction is the only means of teaching this these children. Young children cannot stay online for more than an hour learning. They require free time to socialize and interact with others to facilitate effective learning. For instance, teaching mathematics among kindergartens via online platforms is more challenging; since kindergartens are children who are being introduced to learning systems, they need physical learning and interaction with their teachers for easy and effective learning (Andreevich, 2020). Young children tend to receive inadequate instructions while learning using the online platform. This is caused by a variety of reasons such as the quality of the devices used, lack of infrastructure, inadequate preparation of the teachers and schools since the outbreak of the infection was abrupt and lack of curriculum guidelines.
Digital learning was developed with the sole purpose of preventing the spread of Covid-19. However, its effectiveness was distracted in many occasions such as lack of the basic digital skills among the teachers and the learners made them unprepared to embrace the new learning technology easily (ABDELRAHMAN). This leads to the difficulty of adapting to the online teaching since digital learning depends of the competency of the teacher and the technology incorporated in the pedagogical practices. Inadequate learning instructions reduces learning outcomes among learners. Educational institutions and teachers should ensure that the pedagogical practices should correspond to the digital techniques used for learning, the digital literacy, learner needs, and competencies to ensure that the students remain focused within their field of study.
This study will employ quantitative research design. This type of research design focuses on concrete figures and raw data facts (Leavy, 2017). In this study quantitative analysis will be employed to assess the impacts of digital learning among kindergartens in DUBAI DURING THE Covid-19 pandemic.
The target population of this study will be teachers from different kindergartens in Dubai. A total of 50 students will be selected as the sample size of the study. The sample size will be selected randomly from the kindergartens.
Data collection for the purpose of this study will employ primary data from questionnaires and interviews with the respondents. The questionnaire will involve the research questions which will be in form of open ended questions
The questionnaire used for data collection in this study will comprise of five major sections. Some of the questions will be presented using points where the respondent will be required to answer them as strongly agree, agree, disagree, strongly disagree, neutral. It will also include the demographic information of the respondents followed by the broad objective of the study and the specific objectives of the study.
Data analysis in the study will employ SPSS software. Data will be represented in percentages, mean, and standard deviations. The study will also employ figures and tables to represent data collected.
This study employs the Technology acceptance model as a theory. According to the theory, different people have different opinions, how they perceive new technology (Grani?, 2019); for instance, use of digital learning among kindergartens. Most parents oppose this since digital learning have impacts on the health of the children while others support it as it provides the children with opportunities to learn new skills that they apply in real life situations. This theory is mainly adopted to explain how different people adopts new technology whether a person accepts it by an intention or voluntarily.
The conceptual framework of this study will involve the dependent and independent variables of study. For instance, digital platforms, teachers, and skills (independent variables) will facilitate the impacts (dependent variables) of digital learning on kindergartens in Dubai. The diagram figure below shows the dependent and independent variables of the study.
|
Independent variables |
Dependent variables |
|
Digital platforms Teachers Skills |
Impact of digital learning |
The research will seek permission from the head of education in Dubai to conduct the study. Since this study involves human subjects, anonymity and informed consent of the participants will be protected (Arifin, 2018). The names of the participants will not be indicated on the questionnaires, instead numbers will be used. The researcher will promise the participants that data and information acquired will only be sued for research purposes and will not be disclosed to anyone else.
Conclusion
Electronic learning is the emerging issues in various countries since the outbreak of Covid-19. Dubai prioritizes education thus, opted for electronic learning to ensure that learning activities continue. Electronic learning among kindergartens is essential since it provides the children with opportunities to learn new technological skills and exercise them in the real world situation. Although electronic learning is great importance, it also have several disadvantages such that it does not provide optimal results due to lack of skills by the teachers and the students do not get the instructions well. The disadvantaged areas have no access to digital platforms making it difficult for he learners from these areas access online education. Finally, electronic learning causes some health-related issues on the children.
References
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