NPK News : Over the last few days, the world is in complete lock down and educational institutes in the world have also been closed due COVID-19. Many private and government organizations have started online classes for the students. 

Students say no to online classes




To adjust to the evolving circumstances, universities across the globe turned to online learning. Pakistani universities followed suit. However, the infrastructure does not exist in Pakistan to support this ambitious venture and as a result students without adequate resources are being marginalized. :

Students are facing a lot of difficulties on the online teaching system, as it not effective and reachable to all students. So they are campaigning for no online system. They demand a summer break instead and want the studies to resume when the outbreak ends. 


1)The teachers are pretending to imitate classroom experience in 40 minutes time slots on zoom. That is not possible because most times the bandwidth is so poor students cannot even see them.

2) The students are not stimulated to learn. Technical, STEM subjects and lab time cannot be taught on zoom or other video streaming software’s.

3) There is a difference between online learning via streaming and actual self-paced online learning. Platforms like Coursera are an example of self paced learning. World’s top universities are trying the latter and Pakistani universities are enforcing the former since teachers were not given any time to prepare for either.

4) Internet access required for a good quality video/audio stream is not available in most parts of Pakistan. Try running zoom successfully and uninterrupted from a rural area in Punjab. It won’t work. You might join the conversation but won’t understand the garbled noise. That is unfair to us. Now imagine the same in AJK or Balochistan, they cannot even attend. The virus lockdown is further worsening conditions for students to access stable, high quality internet.

5) Many students are stranded due to the lockdown. They are unable to go home and unable to stay in another city or university hostels after lockdown. They cannot be expected to attend mandatory online classes in these circumstances.

6) All students should have equal opportunities to get their money’s worth of education. Online classes cannot deliver that in the context of Pakistan.

To deal with these grievances, the campaign of #we_want_semester_break was formulated through collective student efforts. The campaign has over 15000 signatures for this appeal on change.org http://chng.it/S4cMv9JF. It now top trends on twitter in Pakistan with 30k tweets.

Many students have shared their concerns on online systems, in their tweets








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