Challenges of Teaching and Learning Mathematics Courses in Online Platforms

Introduction

It is clear that the global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on education at all levels led to conventional face-to-face teaching and learning processes suddenly shifting to emergency distance learning and teaching in many countries. This sudden shift to emergency remote teaching and learning was mainly conducted via the online platform after the closing of schools around the world (Azzi-Huck & Shmis, 2020). Education industries adopting the technologies available such as digital video conferencing platforms like Zoom, Microsoft platform, Webex Blackboard, and Google Classroom to enhance online learning globally (Shahzad et al., 2020).

This situation is similar to that experienced in the Ethiopian education system. Following the COVID-19 pandemic in the country in the middle of Feb.2020, all schools and universities suddenly closed. However, after a month the MoSHE (Ministry of Science and Higher Education) currently named the Ministry of Education (MoE) of Ethiopia gave direction to continue the classes for its postgraduate students in an online platform. This sudden shift to online was in the absence of adequate preparation. problems encountered in managing the online platform since it was a new environment for both students and teachers.

In the process of delivering a course, teachers and students often mention various reasons for the challenges they face. These reasons may include a lack of experience, insufficient internet access, inadequate training, and a lack of specifically designed materials for online learning. However, with these all-constraints students and teachers suddenly found themselves in an online learning environment. At university level there was a leaflet that includes some points of consideration while conducting courses online. Some of these points were, teachers need to provide softcopy teaching and learning material for the students through e-mail, students need to avail themselves by affording their own Internet cost, instructors needed to prepare lecture notes and course reference books in softcopy to send to each student registered for the courses through their e-mail.

Additionally, it was required for instructors to conduct online lectures once every week for each course through various open-source video conferencing platforms such as Google Meet, Zoom, Meet.jei.si, and others similar online medium. As described in the study by Shahzad et al. (2020), students were requested to provide their email addresses to instructors and were subsequently able to take part in virtual lectures by joining the online sessions. Moreover, students must attend above 75% to qualify for sitting for the final examination. This new situation was similar for the mathematics courses in postgraduate program. There are different problems that Different problems happened in many ways to finish the courses up to the required standard. According to university legislation, it is required to cover above 75% of the course contents. However, in the online platform, several courses covered only 50% of the standard and others contents were left for students to cover by their reading. Access to the Internet both from teachers and students’ side, the nature of the course, experience, skill of using the Internet for education purpose, assessment problem, and satisfying the students’ understanding of the concept was most visible while conducting the course. However, it was required for the current research to formally document to what extent these stated problems affected students learning mathematics courses in online platform.