On Friday, (April 10), some university students kicked off a campaign to make the hashtag #ResignChairmanHEC a trend on Twitter. This is a concerted effort by students across Pakistan to pressure the HEC into stopping the conduct of online classes made necessary by the closing of universities due to the spread of Covid-19.

Students from across the country have been lodging their complaints through various channels, i.e. social media, directly to the HEC and via the Citizen’s Portal, etc.

The litany of complaints begins with poor quality audio/video of recorded lectures, and poor choices of presentation style. In a switch from classroom to online classes at a few days’ notice as happened here, these teething problems are to be expected.

Poor audio quality is easily addressed by using a decent, external microphone. Audience feedback can also quickly nudge instructors towards using better presentation tools. For example, some instructors are recording their lectures in the form of poorly framed videos while presenting their material on small white boards.

Poor video quality can quickly render their writing on the board illegible. Nevertheless, that is easily addressed by replacing the use of a physical whiteboard by a virtual whiteboard and pen-based input device. These computer accessories are rather inexpensive, but cost money nonetheless. Universities are responsible for providing their staff these necessary tools, as well as a computer for faculty to use at home.

Any professor who uses a computer in his/her routine teaching could have pointed out these issues before they occurred. The HEC gave universities and faculty about 10 days to figure out how they were going to switch to online classes. As the working paper of the HEC’s Technology Support Committee, dated March 26 shows, it focused on only two aspects of the problem: a) what learning management system (LMS) to use to disseminate course materials to students, and b) what video conferencing tool to use to conduct online classes.

I have to give credit to the committee for not treating all universities the same, but grouping universities into three categories, based on their pre-existing level of technical readiness to adopt online learning, and develop separate approaches for them. Its deliberations addressed the supply-side problems, so to speak.

However, there does not appear to be much consideration for demand-side problems, i.e., capabilities at students’ end, or the lack thereof. When students in the US and other countries are admitted to a university they receive a document called the university’s Computer Requirements. This document, updated every year, lists minimum specifications for a computer that a student must own for the following four years in order to complete his/her studies.

These specifications are usually very modest, and even include internet connection speed necessary for online exams, and it remains students’ responsibility to fulfill them. “I don’t have a computer/internet connection” ceases to be an acceptable excuse. For many students in Pakistan, this used to be taken care of by the prime minister’s laptop scheme, but that programme stands suspended and, as far as I know, universities in Pakistan do not issue any computer requirements on their own.

This means that when the HEC decided to order online learning, students without computers and internet connections at home were caught flat-footed.

Some of the very top universities in the world have even gone beyond offering short courses and specialisations on these online platforms. They are offering full MS programmes.

To confuse matters further, the HEC has announced that universities are closed until May 31 and this time will be treated as “summer vacations,” but on the other hand, it has instructed universities to switch to online classes. So which is it, summer vacations or online classes? What happens after May 31? Will students attend regular classes again and/or have exams? The confusion from some of the decisions made so far is understandable.

There is no doubt that universities and the HEC have been neglecting the rise of online learning and Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs, for years and have been caught unprepared and underprepared. Several innovative and forward looking faculty members have been pushing proposals to integrate more online learning into classroom teaching for years, but received little attention.

All of these are legitimate complaints. Beyond that, however, there are also many bogus complaints. On Twitter, several students are calling online classes discrimination against those lacking internet access. How those same students lacking internet access can still find the bandwidth to protest online is a mystery to me.

Several videos posted on YouTube and circulating on Whatsapp purportedly demonstrate the “problems of online learning”. There is a professor having trouble with the video conferencing software he is using in his class, when a student “helpfully” advises him to press the Alt and F4 keys on his keyboard which, of course, closes the application and removes the professor from his own online session.

There is another clip in which a student has changed his screen name to Osama Bin Laden, while the instructor is trying to mark class attendance. In another one, a student starts playing loud music which prevents the instructor from continuing.

In another video a student strings these incidents together and opines that these are evidence that online learning does not work. What he does not realise is that these are not examples of online learning not working, or instructors not doing their jobs, but self-indicting evidence of students deliberately sabotaging the learning process in a bad-faith effort.

I also had the opportunity to speak to professors teaching online at an elite public sector university in Islamabad, with students from across the country and across the economic spectrum. They are not experiencing any problems or resistance from students. One ventured that while about 90 percent of his students did not have any problems, about 10 percent were complaining. Little wonder then that those 10 percent happen to be the same group that was performing poorly before classes moved online. As for connectivity problems, people from locations as remote as villages in Orakzai appear to have internet connections sufficient to participate.

The jury on whether online learning works came back years ago, and the verdict was in the affirmative. Since then, Coursera, edX, Udemy, and stand-alone platforms of many universities have amply demonstrated that online learning is more than live classes online. MOOCs have proven themselves successful and are here to stay.

Some of the very top universities in the world have gone even beyond offering short courses and specialisations on these online platforms. They are offering full MS programmes. As a matter of fact, back in 2012, MOOCs threatened to swallow and overthrow the traditional residential college/university model. Arguing that online learning does not work is not only lazy and wrong, but also uninformed.