Education Minister Yoo Eun-hae speaks during her visit to EBS headquarters in Goyang, Gyeonggi Province, Monday, to check ongoing preparations for the second online-school opening, scheduled for Thursday. /Yonhap.



By Bahk Eun-ji



Frequent malfunctions of distance learning platforms used by elementary, middle and high schools amid the COVID-19 outbreak are raising concerns over the scheduled second phase of online-school opening, Thursday, according to officials, Tuesday. The unprecedented online-only spring semester for high school students and middle school seniors began April 9.



According to the Korea Education and Research Information Service (KERIS), which runs e-Learning site, a learning management system (LMS) for schools across the country, there were access failures from 9:50 a.m., Tuesday. The e-Learning site provides learning materials tailored to the curriculum for first grade at elementary schools through seniors at middle schools. Teachers can open "online classes" on the site and manage them through the LMS. KERIS said it has been working on server recovery.



"Users in each province have different connection routes to the e-Learning site, but some users in a number of regions appear to have access problems," said a KERIS official. The official said the server capacity is sufficient for the current workload.



On Monday, the Korea Educational Broadcasting System (EBS) also said connections to its online classes for high school students failed for two-and-a-half hours from 8:50 a.m. High school students trying to use the EBS system were listed as non-attending, and video lectures were not played due to the access problems. Due to the disconnections in the morning, teachers also had trouble instructing their students. EBS said its server was restored at 11:30 a.m. on the day, but it has not diagnosed what caused the problem.



With the fear of potential mass infections at schools, students and parents asked for an additional postponement to schools opening their doors. In response, the Ministry of Education (MOE) decided to start the new semester with online classes for fourth to sixth graders, April 16, for first to third graders, April 20, while middle and high school students began classes last week.



However, complaints erupted over the quality of the online schooling with frequent malfunctions of the learning platforms. The education ministry previously vowed to reinforce the capacity of EBS servers, which were supposed to be able to manage 3 million simultaneous connections so that there would be no access problems. But many educators, parents and students are questioning whether the government-run education platforms including EBS and KERIS are working properly.



"Any flaws in remote learning have to be addressed by April 20 when first to third graders at elementary school will begin their classes," said Education Minister Yoo Eun-hae during a visit to EBS headquarters in Goyang, Gyeonggi Province, Monday.

