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There is an increasing interest worldwide for the deployment of technology in the education sector.
No issue brought this to the fore than the recent COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic led to a surge in the use of digital technologies in education.
It also revealed staggering gender gaps in access to and use of digital technology around the world.
Digital learning presents an excellent opportunity to bridge the digital gender divide and bring quality education to every girl.
It is against this background that stakeholders in the education-technology space have been advised to invest in digital resources so as to enhance the quality of education among girls.
This was the takeout of the conversations during the recent edition of EdTech, an initiative of the Mastercard Foundation in partnership with Co-Creation Hub.
The virtual roundtable moderated by a social engineering practitioner, Joyce Daniel, featured panelists such as National Programme Officer, UN Women Nigeria, Patience Ekeoba, Associate Product Marketing Manager,Google, Temilade Adelakun and former Commissioner for Women Affairs and Social Development, Akwa Ibom State, Eunice Thomas and a University of Benin undergraduate, Oseme Eigbodion.
At a roundtable with the theme ‘Advancing Girls’ Education Through Digital Learning” the former the Akwa Ibom education commissioner, Thomas explained that there was the need to address unconscious biases against the girl child to ensure that digital learning is made possible and interesting. She maintained that with the world going digital, time has come to let Nigerian girls understand the significance of digital learning to their overall growth.
Thomas highlighted that though there have been issues around policy implementation in the education sector, the solution lies in stakeholders working together to monitor and evaluate the implementation.
In her remarks, Adelakun noted that government and other stakeholders have a big role to play in eradicating gender bias and enable access to digital learning for the girl child.
“We need to promote gender-responsive digital teaching and learning. We need to invest to be able to know about girls’ digital realities and ensure that learning solutions are custom-fit for their digital world. We must ensure that our curriculum have 24th century skills,” she concluded.
Also speaking, Ekeoba identified high cost of digital education, online bullying, negatve cultural or social norms, and ignorance as some of the challenges confronting improvement of digital learning among girls.
While calling on government to invest heavily on digital learning, she urged tech entrepreneurs and other stakeholders to introduce technology that is user-friendly as this would go a long way to supporting girls on digital learning.
“We need to invest a lot if we want our girls to be digitally savvy. We need to commit a lot of resources to improve girls’ education in digital learning. We need to develop our content/ curriculum in local languages to help learners comprehend faster. We need educated parents to be able to manage their fears on how best to handle risks associated with digital learning and provide capacity training for teachers,” she said.
