By Khalid
Taimur Akram
In the contemporary era, the COVID-19 pandemichas imposed massiveperils to global public health and economies. To date, millions of people have been infected and died.The persistent dominance of the virus has covered the risks associated with other pandemics/epidemics and health care systems.The death toll is just like the tip of an iceberg. The catalyst implications oncountries’social and economic structures are formidable. The vulnerable and marginalized populations have already faced severe a disproportionate burden of the pandemic.The year 2021 brought new challenges amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The mutation occurring within the Coronavirus genome has gradually surfaced with the cyclic orders of multiple waves of the pandemic. In this aspect, national policies and international schemes aided with centralized programs have led to positive gains.Nevertheless, ending the pandemic’s repercussions and quickly recovering would require significant determinants to follow a roadmap of new normal. New normal in today’s time has also led to many transitional changes. Therefore, adaptingto the normal would requirea coordinated, coherent and effective response tosustainable development. In this aspect, the study provides a detailed analysis of the new normal and transformation in the post-Covid era. Technological advancement and its dependency have enabled each sector, i.e., education, health, business, e-commerce and many others, to adjust to the changes in the pandemic era. Therefore, the paper discussed the post-impacts of Covid-19 on different domains and communications while providinga better understanding in order to adopt the new normal.
Rethinking Practices under the New Normal:
Life beyond the Covid virus holds a potential change for everyone to adapts well to the new normal. Globally, the vaccine campaign has been started ata quick pace. Many countries have been assisting each other by providing pharmaceutical aid and vaccines. However, an important questionlies that whether the world will go back to the pre-covid scenario or the world has to adjust with the new normal? In this regard, many experts envisaged that the world must adapt to the new changes as the conditions in the post-Covid era would be different.
The new normal brought transformative changes in many sectors, including education, business, Information Technology (IT), e-commerce, online banking and shopping mechanisms and many more significant fields.In addition, the governments haveinvested in efficacious conflict preparedness andrevamped efforts to address structural and systemic inequities under an integrated sustainable development framework.Now, the countries are paying attention to form a robust integrated structure to enhance health care delivery mechanisms’ capability whileattaining greater accountability for future discourse.
Digital Transformation amid the SARS-COV2:
It is vital to imagine the impact of technology in our new normallives and the general trends that are already emerged. Worldwide, the functioning of many sectors went online amid the pandemic. In this regard, the role of technological advancement is pertinent to discuss. The technological transition has enabled many sectors’ dependency on the online system.
a. Education Sector:
Education is the foundation of developing main pillars of a country, i.e., economy, society, and politics. For national progress, education is a key pillar. It enables a person for cognitive thinking and makes them realize their rights and duties regarding the state’s development. Educational institutions including, schools, colleges or universities, are the largest producers of human resource and knowledge. However, the education sector has been experiencing a vital transformation due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The education sector, like many other sectors, has faced devastating implications of the pandemic. There are many new approaches and dimensions to the new normal. There is a stark requirement to discuss educationin the wake of rising opportunities and risks in this aspect.The closure of many educational institutionscorresponds with the student evaluation period in colleges and schools. Subsequently, it has been observed that currentassessmentpractices adopted as a response to the pandemic are likely to become a substantial part of the new normal in education. Many schools have issued implementing guidelines, changing many aspects of evaluation characteristics of the curriculum. In this regard, the transforming degrading system also has been observed. A lot of schools/colleges have decided to alter their appraisal pattern from quantitative to qualitative, for instance,pass or fail system. At the same time, assessmentdecision had supported by prior grading or performance record of students. Many people are concernedabout is effects and advantages and disadvantages in the context of with relevance to student’s motivation. Such crucial steps were taken because of the crisis. However, it has also been envisaged that the changed evaluation level would disconnect the motivation, student needs to strive for higher grades.
–The author is an Executive Director, Center for Global & Strategic Studies (CGSS), Islamabad
