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Join on Telegram While a few Moroccan educational institutions adopted e-learning before the COVID-19 pandemic, the pandemic played a critical role in the normalization and expansion of e-learning across the North African country.
In March 2020, Morocco launched a digital learning platform that sought to enable students and teachers to meet online amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The platform mainly aimed to facilitate communication between teachers and students, engaging students in learning through lectures, digital texts, and audio-visual techniques.
As the pandemic raged, the effectiveness of the e-learning process was a major concern as low-income students could not adapt to the newly established mechanism due to a lack of technological tools and internet access.
Oussama Esmili, CEO of IDEO Factory – a digital learning company based in Morocco, has shared with Morocco World News (MWN) his vision of how e-learning can serve the North African kingdom’s development and progress.
With nearly 20 years of experience, Esmili’s primary mission is to help companies, public administrations, and others transform their training methods and digitalize their learning content.
“IDEO Factory is a leader in digital learning across Africa and a trusted partner for companies and institutions seeking to improve the quality and accessibility of their corporate training programs,” he told MWN, noting that the company specialized in developing cutting-edge solutions that combine technology, AI, and personalized learning experiences.
The company, which clinched a silver medal in the “Best Advance in Learning Management Technology,” is setting several goals for Morocco and Africa, including making online training more accessible and personalized.
It took the silver medal as part of the US Excellence in Technology Awards last year.
Emphasizing the importance of AI, Esmili stressed the importance of how it is impactful for organizations and individuals, offering a unique chance to bridge the gap in different areas like the quality of education.
“E-learning, I believe, will likely be one of the key drivers in upscaling Moroccan and African youth in the coming years, helping them unlock their potential and new opportunities in the future,” Esmili added.
The IDEO Factory CEO stressed, however, that it is a “bit early” to talk about a fully established vision as progress requires more effort and more work.
But he noted that steps are being taken as Moroccan public administrations in particular are “moving forward and online training is becoming more common in professional environments.”
The education sector is still “lagging” behind, the CEO said, adding that the next challenge is to move from this remote learning to more structured and engaging e-learning experiences.
“I believe that the main challenge is to develop content that is tailored to our culture and needs as Moroccans and Africans,” he concluded.
The education sector remains one of the most prevalent challenges that government officials acknowledge.
E-learning and education challenges
Several reports show Moroccans’ dissatisfaction with this sector, including one 2023 report from the Arab Barometer.
According to the report, Moroccan citizens are “predominantly unsatisfied with the public education system, especially amid drastic pressure that it came under during the pandemic.”
Only a quarter of Moroccans are “completely satisfied or dissatisfied with the education system,” with many taking issues with overcrowding, lack of means of transportation, outdated technology, and issues in infrastructure, it added.
The World Bank also expressed concerns about how the pandemic and its crisis threatened to further undermine Morocco’s outcomes in the education sector.
“Lockdown measures, including school closures, have led to the loss of at least three months of learning for an estimated 900,000 preschoolers, eight million primary, and secondary schoolers, and one million students in tertiary education,” the bank said.
The Moroccan Court of Audits shared alarming statistics in 2023, disclosing that 25% of Moroccan students were unable to access remote learning in the wake of COVID-19.
In an annual report, the court said many students who missed virtual learning classes were from rural areas and vulnerable backgrounds as they lacked the technology resources needed to attend classes.
The court also acknowledged the significant disparity between students in the public and private sectors in distance learning.
An overwhelming number of teachers were also unable to complete their programs due to a lack of adequate training for online instruction.
The report called on the ministry to “define precisely the conditions and reasons justifying the use of remote learning in unusual circumstances,” especially in rural areas.
It also detailed the absence of professional training and certificates for teachers’ development.
“The majority of the teachers who were hired by [regional educational] academies did not take the professional eligibility exam that entitles them to obtain a certificate of professional competencies,” the report said.
