Malaysia Student Capability Degraded

STUDENTS’ RESULT DOWNGRADED DURING PANDEMIC?

By Emily Ng Yenn Yi

Photo news: Covid-19 affected Malaysia Education

Due to the serious pandemic going serious in our country, the Ministry of Education has announced that Malaysia has to stop the current education method. To secure our people’s health, the Ministry of Education decided to transfer our learning to internet learning.

At the early age of Covid-19, only higher education students are forced to learn online whereas the other level of students are allowed to do physical learning. In March 2020, the Ministry of Health Malaysia published a set of acts under the Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases Act 1988 (the Act) to fight the spread of Covid-19.

As the cases of infection increase crazily these past few months, the whole education has changed to online learning now.

Online teaching to Malaysian, is definitely a new thing and a big challenge. For the past few decades, our people have been educated by traditional education methods. People are already used to learning from textbooks, printed notes, doing everything on paper, and learning face to face with teachers.

In 2021, every educator is using online teaching as the only way to learn or teach. Online learning not only affected people by letting others feel not get used to it, it also slowly affected people’s learning attitude and learning capability. Therefore, these lead to inefficient learning and cause education descent.

Students’ Result: Learning Method Before Pandemic and During Pandemic Are Different.

Education is more reliant on your learning attitude; it is not on how smart you are or how high your IQ is or even if you are really born gifted. If people are really born gifted but the learning attitude is bad, their talent will be ‘NORMAL’ one day. Therefore, learning attitude is the most important thing to everyone but learning methods during the pandemic make things got worse.

Natelie Yong Wen Hui (20, student of Sunway University) states that online learning is easily distracted by other issues. Besides, online learning provides us with class recordings so that we can have a look back when we are doing revision. But this has become an excuse for students to be absent for classes and learn from the recordings.

“So that I will head up quite a large amount of class recordings to watch before the exam,” she said.

Online learning really does not have the learning atmosphere.

Lim Jo Yee as a UTAR student, during the interview, she mentioned that people are too shy to turn on the webcam and their mic while answering questions or during class sessions. So that there is no chance for the teacher to see the students’ facial expression, they will never know if the students are listening or did they catch up with the class.

Sleeping behind the camera is the common thing during these online learning days. Especially for morning class.

Besides, students being shy in the class will make the class environment awkward. If there are only teachers speaking and all the students refuse to speak in the class, then the learning is inefficient. Some students will ignore the teacher’s answer and this makes the entire class waiting for very long. This attitude in class is definitely a ‘NO’.

Ooi Rou Chyi (21, Monash Malaysia University) states that she hopes that there is time to expand their classes to create some small activity between students. This will unite the students in the class and might solve the problem of being shy to ask questions. Therefore, this will effectively improve the class environment. More active discussion will be more efficient in learning and students will paying more attention on their class.

During the interview from the educator and student, the main issue that affected their study most is they could not focus on their class, they easily get distracted by things surrounding them. Attending class alone sitting in front of the device is hard for students to focus on. Without guidance from the teacher, students will also be lazy doing what they are supposed to do.

Especially for younger students. Soo Xin Tian (21, a practice teacher of primary school) mentioned that she needs to design some small events to attract their attention. Also, parents are playing an important role in guiding their children, since young kids don't have self-control and a good learning attitude.

These issues cause Malaysian students’ capability to decrease and downgrading of their result.

Homemade Laboratory

Students or educators in the field of science are needed in using laboratories for their study. During this pandemic, all the students are forced to study online so that students lose the chance to conduct experiments in the laboratory.

During the pandemic, they conduct experiments online. Ooi Rou Chyi as a Medicinal Chemistry student stated, they are now doing experiments by watching video or using an application to conduct an online experiment.

Pei-Ti Chen (21, Monash Malaysia University Field of Science) also stated, there is no big difference between learning online or physically. They can still receive the knowledge just that they could not be familiar with the laboratory equipment and they will lack experience in the experiment environment.

Who is the Biggest Issue?

Traditional learning method, yes it is efficient. Does online learning work? Yes, it works too if student gives most positive support.

The biggest issue that people think online learning is not efficient is they do not have self-control and self-discipline. So that this attitude makes it harder for them to do online learning.

Due to the improvement of technologies, one day everything will go online. People should need to get used to the new modern generation but not blaming the new things are inefficient.

Therefore, I believe the biggest problem doing online learning is yourself and people need to cope with this problem. During pandemic, everyone please stay at home and stay safe.