Education during pandemic: Challenges faced by educational institutions and students
Current pandemic, Covid-19 has forced education institutions
including universities, coaching, schools across India and the world to suspend
their physical classrooms and shift to online classes. In India, while this
transition has been smooth for most private institutes, the public ones are
still adapting. There have also been debates on the nature of classes and the
future of examination and evaluation—whether they could be conducted online or
not.
While faculty grapples with new ways of managing
this sudden transition from offline classroom teaching to online education,
students are left clinging on to their mobile phones and computer screens. If this
continues for some time, how would higher education is affected? What are some
of the deeper issues that require introspection? And what does this mean for
the students going forward?
Getting Digital Infrastructure Ready:
As soon as the Covid-19 crisis broke out in India, as
per Govt. directives all educational institutions suspended their offline
classes and started exploring online classes so that students don’t have to
suffer in their academic session and syllabus can proceed.
There was advantage for some coaching institutes
who already had presence in online market. Students immediately shifted their
focus to these online platforms. But, looking at the duration of lockdown
period and in anticipation of losing these students to competitors, almost all
offline players also started online classes by March end. Institutes agreed
that their transition to online teaching had not been very difficult. However, significant
investment in infrastructure and additional training for teachers and students was
required.
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