Role of ICT for Community in Education During COVID-19

Introduction

Education raises people's productivity and creativity and promotes entrepreneurship and technological advances. Also, it plays a very crucial role in securing economic and social progress and improving income distribution. Countries all over the world understand the importance of education and are working hard to improve educational needs by implementing various government policies (Abbott et al., 2019). These policies directly impact all the forms of the education sector, such as pre-schools, kindergarten to higher education, and then the university level education. The students and teachers are affected most by these educational policies. Therefore, policymakers play a very significant role in economic education growth. That is why an enormous amount of attention is paid to create a productive learning environment by designing a smart curriculum and infrastructure for quality education.

ICT enhances the ability of learning. It provides a medium where teachers and students, and other education community members can interact and improve the education management system from the class level to the education sector on a national level.

For centuries teachers are teaching by using books and delivering lectures using traditional methods, which are quite hard, and teachers must work a lot to make lectures interactive. Quality education depends on the factors like keeping learners motivated, continuously developing their skills, and training teachers to stay updated by providing the latest knowledge and information about their courses and area of research. ICT serves as an educational transformation tool. It creates a learner-centered environment. ICT applications and tools training help the teachers integrate the traditional teaching method to the state-of-the-art ICT based effective education system. In a smart ICT education system, teachers can access the recently published material and break down the learning outline into activities and lessons to gain more content consolidation and rehearsal for the students. The interactive lectures keep the students motivated and satisfy their learning curiosity. Student learning outcome has increased rapidly. Students have developed the necessary skills which are required in real-time. Accessibility to the learning content is improved with advancements in technologies; teachers and students can upload and download learning material in the system by using their phones or laptops anywhere.

ICT based modern technologies in the education system benefit the teacher and the student to get the education of real value. These tools are used to improve the skills of the student. The hybrid combination of traditional teaching methods and learning management system is used in developed and developing countries. However, this hybrid combination of education and learning management tools were never taken seriously. The ICT was not entirely integrated into the learning management system as we have learned that during the current world pandemic, COVID-19.

In recent months humanity is facing a new challenge in the form of COVID-19. Most of the education system around the world is shut down. This pandemic is forcing ICT in the limelight more than ever to adapt and help community educational needs. Institutes are forced to use technology in the education sector. The world understands now that education is not bound to venues anymore.

In this chapter, we will discuss the community needs and how ICT can cope with those needs effectively. Afterwards, COVID-19, and educational challenges are discussed. In the end, the conclusion and future works are provided.