Feature

Computer Aided Learning can develop
teaching learning environment

Md.Masum Billah

POST Primary basic And Continuing Education (PACE) Programme of BRAC is involved in many aspects of quality improvement of secondary education. Poor preparation of teachers has been detected as one of the reasons of decline in quality of education in Bangladesh. Teachers need refresher courses both in content and proper pedagogies for teaching. In addition, unlike the urban areas where families comparatively well off encourage their children to study and stay in schools even after school hours to have extra teaching, students in rural areas do not attend schools regularly because classroom situations hardly attracts them. Teachers also find it difficult to retain the interest of the students in the large classes of 60 to 100 learners. This environment contributes to the rural schools' inability to retain students till the completion of their secondary education.

PACE has explored the difficult areas to identify methods to improve the teaching leaning scenario in the classrooms to enhance students' overall learning environment. It is seen that in many countries of the world IT is being used for improving the academic learning outcomes of children. Considering this fact, PACE started developing the Computer Aided Learning programme in 2004 to improve the teaching capacity of the teachers and to make the classes much more interesting, interactive and exciting for the students so that they become interested and want to stay in schools more than their usual hours. The prime objective of the programme is to develop interactive education software based on the national curriculum. PACE selected seven schools at Mirzapur Upazila to pilot the developed software and see how it works and how far it makes the students interested and benefited.

CAL materials will be used as a supplementary tool for Teacher Training, which is another significant component of Brac Education Programme, particularly in the secondary education level. Various questions, visual aids and relevant examples will guide the trainee teachers to facilitate the learning of the students and make the classroom more interactive, learner-centred and a comfortable one. The materials can be used for their own development.

Forty-one teachers of the seven piloting schools have already been trained so that they can use CAL materials comfortably in their classroom situation. The CAL training in all the three subjects (English, Science and Mathematics) is divided into two parts. The first part of the CAL training is dedicated to introducing the teachers to the function of computer in three or four days.

Teacher's training is a significant part of the process of developing CAL materials. Therefore, it is very important for the CAL materials developers to participate in the teacher training and learn the drawbacks of the lessons. While developing the materials at the piloting stage, the developers and IT team targeted the lessons according to school terms. The positive response of the students and schools tells us that Computer Aided Learning is gaining ground. It has already drawn the attention of the government to spread it across rural schools of Bangladesh.