Hour Vannak April 20, 2020

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SWOT Analysis of Covid-19 on Education

The COVID-19 pandemic is the latest and most severe a health in the 21st century. Countries
around the world have decided to temporarily close schools and universities. Teaching is
moving online on an unchartered and unprecedented scale. Students’ learning and assessments
are also shifted online, with a lot of trial and error and uncertainty for every stakeholder. Many
assessments have been cancelled due to the crisis. Most importantly, these interruptions may
stay around for long term, and produce undesired consequences for educational institution, and
are likely to increase inequality.

There is significant number of educational challenges caused by the Coronavirus (COVID-19)

1. STRENGTHS:
a. Covid-19 helps to redefine the role of the educator in the classroom. This may mean
that the role of educators will need to move towards facilitating young people’s
development as contributing members of society.
b. Covid-19 has taught us life skills needed for the future skills, and those skills
include creativity, communication and collaboration, alongside empathy and
emotional intelligence; and being able to work across demographic lines of
differences to harness the power of the collective through effective teamwork.
c. Covid-19 helps to unlock technology to deliver education by using available and
up-coming technological tools to create content for remote learning for students in
all sectors.
d. In some countries, Cambodia for example, E-Learning was not recognized prior to
Covid-19 pandemic. Now the Ministry of Education, Youths, and Sports start to
recognize E-Learning, at least for the time being.
e. Teams often become more solid and steadfast when they are experiencing a crisis.
f. Educational programs are filled with employees who are deeply committed to the
work of international education.
g. Schools may turn this crisis into advantage by establishing strong partnerships
within the community.
h. This crisis helps to promote a diverse and vibrant student body and campus
community through virtual world.
i. Educators start to become good with teaching remotely by using technology such
as synchronous meeting, and many other classroom platforms such as Telegram,
Zoom and Schoology.

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 j. With many schools closing, learning materials are shared in a more effective way
as educators can upload various types of documents, e-books, videos, and others in
their virtual classes. BELTEI International University promotes virtual classes
through Telegram, Zoom Meeting, and Schoology.
k. By going for E-Learning, educators are able to produce students’ performance
report fairly easily with their finger tips such as students’ punctuality, presence,
assignment completion, quality, and test results. It’s also fairly easy to monitor
students’ activities which always remain on social media platform and well
recorded.
l. Through social media platforms, educators connect with students as individual
learners. Students know that their lecturers or teachers are interested in them as
individual learners.
m. By switching from traditional education to E-Learning, parents’ role is gaining
momentum as they have to get involved with teachers and school in helping their
children learn.

2. WEAKNESSES:
a. There is a lack of appropriate travel insurance for individuals or faculty led groups.
b. There is uncertainty about how to handle a global issue of this scale when it comes
to students who are stranded, being quarantined, etc.
c. The world has weak or non-existent crisis management infrastructure in place.
d. Most educational institutions are not included in decision making during a crisis or
having no authority to influence decisions being made by the government.
e. There is a decline in enrollment due to changing demographics and increased
competition in some countries.
f. Lower than expected student-success outcomes become apparent, including student
learning, retention and completion as many educational institutions are not yet fully
ready for E-learning.
g. Some parents lack the skills and knowledge to help their children learn from home.
h. Students’ learning assessment is moved online thus will likely have a large
measurement error than usual.
i. There is a lack of a brand and strategic marketing and communications strategy.
j. The engagement is uneven through technology across students, campus and
community – both within and across.
k. There are inadequate resources for facilities, equipment and recruitment and
retention of quality staff.

3. OPPORTUNITIES:
a. We have students who have returned home from studying abroad unexpectedly and
are prime candidates for local re-entry program. This creates an opportunity to
focus (or re-focus) on re-entry, including the support of mental health professionals
(not only for our students and faculty, but for administrators too).
b. We have students eager to go abroad to study, and that is impossible right now or
in the near future. This creates an opportunity for local educational institutions to

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 thoughtfully consider the design of new educational program and curriculum that
meet their needs and demands.
c. We have students who are potentially being placed on lock down abroad, or
required to work from home under certain circumstances, allowing us to expand
our virtual programming and to be creative in teaching approaches, including the
employment of deep compassion.
d. We have staff who are working virtually, unexpectedly, who have an opportunity
to learn new skills around virtual teams and communication.
e. There is a growing public interest in educational value and transparent pricing.
f. Partnerships are expanding and engagement opportunities within communities.
g. Non-traditional market (E-learning) is expanding.
h. Students develop socio-emotional skills and learn more about how to contribute to
society as citizens.

4. THREATS:
a. Some educational institutions are shutting down due to financial losses.
b. Some other educational institutions have to spend money on unexpected additional
consulting, refunds, etc.
c. Some students are disillusioned and may hesitate to register to study again.
d. Global partners may fear working with local educational institutions.
e. Fear of closure of international education exchange departments and/or staff layoffs
has become apparent.
f. There is a significant increase of regional and online competition for students.
g. Investment in higher education in many countries has become stagnant.
h. There is a sharp decrease of family buying power and high rate of unmet financial
need, thus it may result in their children suspending their study.
i. Higher education’s current role in society is less valued while expectations are
rising.
j. Dropout rates are very high at many universities.
k. Some students have fewer opportunities for learning at home due to distractions.
l. For many young learners, their time out of school may present economic burdens
for parents who may face challenges finding prolonged childcare.

CONCLUSION

The Covid-19 pandemic makes us realize that we should always be ready to cope with the
unexpected and get prepared to provide students the best no matter where the learning process
takes place. Investing in technology system is crucial for both private and public sectors. The
lockdown of educational institutions is causing significant interruption in students’ learning
and assessments. What schools have to do is to collect resources to rebuild the loss in learning
when this crisis is over. Schools must wisely manage how to use these resources, and how to
identify students with disadvantages. Schools should postpone rather than skipping students’
assessment of learning during this crisis. For graduate students, there should be policies to
support their entry to the labour market in order to avoid longer unemployment periods. All
educational institutions should have plans to support the international education global

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 community to cope with the current crisis (Covid-19) as well as any unknown circumstances
in the future, while at the same time, the institutions should also look to the strengths and
opportunities out of the crisis.

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