Blended learning in an energy crisis: Innovation or institutional amnesia?

“My classroom has four ceiling fans, but if we are to attend online classes from home, we will need 50 fans.”

This social media post from a schoolboy has the potential to become a textbook arithmetical problem or a sequel to the Emperor’s New Clothes. The simplicity of the comment reminds us how grown-ups obsessed with the big picture often miss out on smaller things. The boy was reacting to the government’s move to switch to blended learning, splitting the week between three days of in-person and virtual classes each. By any measure, this plan is a policy born of constraint: shortage of fuel, spikes in fuel costs, and thickening traffic congestion. It probably offers a pragmatic solution by reducing the physical attendance of students in selected schools and digitising learning for those with the necessary infrastructure to keep the system running. But beneath the pragmatism lies a repetition of unresolved failures of Covid-era experimentation with remote learning. As this pilot programme is rolled out, the government must decide whether it is a pedagogical reform or an ad hoc adaptive innovation.

The education minister, when announcing the pilot programme, was right to point out that every crisis offers an opportunity. But before bringing in changes to our rigid schooling system, we need to analyse the risks and benefits further. After all, as the boy quoted earlier has shown, in energy terms, the solution redistributes demand rather than suppressing it. True, by halving physical attendance, the plan has the potential of reducing peak-hour congestion in cities like Dhaka. But is the traffic or communication problem the same in small towns and villages? If there is a plan to scale the model to include less urban areas in the future, adopting a national policy based on urban experiences would by no means be wise.

During our romance with blended learning, we saw the benefits of pedagogical diversification. We introduced our teachers to various digital platforms, trained them with asynchronous learning, and encouraged them to use multimedia content and adopt self-paced engagement. These features are still largely absent in conventional classrooms. The energy crisis can help us return to the digital institutionalisation that began during the pandemic and accelerate the integration of technology into education. However, the problem with these initiatives is that the promised benefits are conditional. To benefit from the transition to online teaching, we need institutional infrastructure, continuous professional training, and socioeconomic readiness. Focusing on selected schools will expose the structural inequality as well as the digital divide. The immediate concern is far from technological; it involves our socioeconomic reality. According to a 2021 national survey, only 18.7 percent of children participated in remote learning during pandemic closures, with rural participation dropping to 15.9 percent and primary-level engagement to a mere 13.1 percent. These are not marginal gaps; they are systemic exclusions.

Our previous brush with blended learning made us aware of a two-speed education system: one for digitally equipped, urban, middle-class students, and another for those without devices, connectivity, or conducive home environments. The minister’s “voluntary” framing, by urging “capable institutions” to opt in, may make resource-heavy institutions feel obligated. Elite schools will adopt and adapt under compulsion, while under-resourced institutions will lag to widen inequality.

Central to the teaching model lies teacher preparedness. Unless teachers are aware of online instructional design, assessment, and engagement, this system is likely to fail. This is evident in the candid comment of a newly recruited teacher. With no experience with online classes, the teacher is worried about sustaining student attention and rightly so. Digital classrooms require a different set of protocols and etiquette. Many students may not have the required bandwidth, data, or gadgets for an entire school day. And if the camera is off, it is impossible to know what the student is doing on the other side of the black mirror. Engaging them online is a skill attained through training on digital pedagogy, content development, and instructional technology. Otherwise, online classes risk becoming passive lecture broadcasts with minimal interaction. In the worst-case scenario, classes become symbolic exercises to satisfy policy compliance without delivering learning outcomes.

The pilot policy must consider the household economy of education. For primary-level students, online learning requires adult supervision. Most households in the city rely on dual incomes. So, the policy must address the issue of working parents who cannot afford to send their children to formal daycare or let their children stay at home unattended to engage in online classes. Blended learning, in this context, transfers costs from the state to the household. Parents will be forced to factor in the time costs (parental supervision), financial costs (devices, internet connection), and emotional costs (stress, uncertainty). This is a classic case of policy externalisation, where efficiency gains on the macro level generate inequities on the micro level.

Let us also consider students’ stress factors. Alternating between online and offline modes can fragment cognitive engagement. Say, one section has a biology class on Monday, and another on Tuesday. So, one section will do the class online and the other offline. The absence of consistent classroom interaction could affect young minds. Already due to increased screen time, many students suffer from attention deficiency. The new model could impact social learning, formative assessment, and teacher-student rapport.

The absence of structured feedback loops during the pandemic led to significant learning loss, controversially complemented by an auto-pass decree. The assessment integrity was compromised because few schools have plagiarism software, and it was impossible to know who was doing the students’ homework. Reintroducing a hybrid model without addressing these deficits risks normalising suboptimal learning outcomes.

But the greatest irony of all is that this solution addresses an energy crisis by increasing reliance on electricity-dependent digital systems. The policy assumes that all students of “capable schools” have reliable household electricity, uninterrupted internet access, and device availability. But given the prevalence of load-shedding, unstable internet connectivity, and device scarcity, is it possible to guarantee that all students can join synchronous online classes?

Then there are the invisible concerns of exposing students to online spaces at an early stage. It would be interesting to see what measures the government has taken in terms of data security, student privacy, and platform dependency. What about the mental well-being of students who may be affected by the isolationist nature of online teaching? How about students with different needs? In many households, girls may face disproportionate domestic responsibilities during home-based learning days. Furthermore, a policy piloted in Dhaka may not translate to rural contexts, yet its eventual scaling could ignore these differences. Instead of seeing blended learning as a stopgap measure, the government must think of systemic transformation, aiming for a phased implementation of digital learning. It can start with higher education and senior secondary levels, where digital readiness is relatively higher. Teachers’ certification in digital pedagogy should be made mandatory as this policy is rolled out. The implementation will require infrastructure investment, like subsidies on devices and internet, as well as availability of reliable power solutions.

While the government is right to insist that education must not stall in times of crisis, it must also admit that continuity without quality is a hollow achievement. The risk is not that blended learning will fail outright; it is that it will succeed in a fragmented manner while superficially masking deeper inequities and pedagogical erosion.

Dr Shamsad Mortuza is vice-chancellor of the University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh (ULAB).

Views expressed in this article are the author's own. 

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