Regulating Multitasking Rule for Students Submitting Concurrent Tasks During ODL

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic has irrevocably caused almost everyone to be in a state of confusion, frustration and dilemma. Students all over the globe are required to be at home and attend classes online for almost three years now. The open distance learning (ODL) is a blessing to many who believe that the responsibility to gain education must go on and such a faith is rendered at the tips of the fingers with amazing technological advances and gadgets. However, studies have shown that not many could happily adapt the ODL for various reasons. Despite the availability of technologies that could offer information and knowledge to students and guide them throughout their learning time, students have truthfully admitted that they could not cope satisfactorily. One of such reasons is because there were too many tasks and too little time given simultaneously (multitasking) by instructors who were probably trying to maintain their sanity at the end of the rope too. This writing was a mixed method study that focused on the reasons students get depressed during ODL and has offered some specific solutions, legal or otherwise, for one particular contributory factor for that depressed feeling, namely expectations from all teachers/lecturers for concurrent submission of tasks. The paper also aimed at establishing a rule by the Ministry of Education to make it mandatory not to compel students to submit tasks and assignments all at one time. Such a rule has the purpose of mandatorily facilitating both students and lecturers/teachers to organise their task submissions in a schedule so that there will not be clashes from one lecturer/teacher to another.