Online education during the pandemic
The pandemic has forced many sudden changes in the teaching-learning process across the globe. It has been a learning experience for everyone involved with education. The response of the Indian government toward the Coronavirus pandemic was to first announce a 14-hour people’s curfew called “Janata Curfew” on 22 March 2020. Only essential services like police, medical services, media, etc were exempted from the curfew. The first phase of the nationwide lockdown in India suddenly started on 24 March 2020 and continued till 31st May 2021. A very slow unlock process started on 1st June 2020 but most of the educational institutions remained closed. The lockdown in India was sudden and a very hard one where the public transport like local buses, metro, trains, taxis, autos, most of the shops were closed. Grocery/convenience stores were allowed to sell only the essential products. Stiff penalties were imposed on people that were coming outside their homes. This lockdown probably was unique and one of the hardest in the world. This lockdown is getting lifted now with completely normal functioning to resume from 01 April 2022.
This sudden lockdown caught everyone including educational institutions completely unprepared. For almost two months the teaching-learning process was completely halted as most of the educational institutions including India’s largest university named Delhi University did not have a well-established mechanism to have a complete database of contact details like email addresses and phone numbers of students. A large number of faculties in colleges did not have an official email address. Most of the prominent universities/colleges do not have a good and stable internet facility within their campuses. Hardly any of the school teachers to date have an official email account. Many of the students in schools and colleges did not have access to a basic smartphone something that is essential for the online teaching-learning process. A large number of students in colleges/universities do not have access to any computer/laptop even today.
It is to be noted that we have witnessed an internet revolution in the last nearly 15 years. The internet data is available at very cheap prices and it could go as low as 60 GB of mobile data per month at a cost of about USD 3, extremely cheap smartphones available from as low as USD 50, and a wide reach of optical fiber connectivity across the country. This has resulted in about 1.2 billion mobile phone connections in India’s population is about 1.35 billion, more than 700 million internet users, and the average data consumption rate is about 13 GB per user per month. This background helped in the resurrection of the teaching-learning activities that were seriously impacted by an extremely hard lockdown.
Slowly the process of contacting students and providing official email addresses to faculties started after a couple of months. Students in colleges and schools were contacted via mobile phones. They were requested to create their email ID. The classes largely resumed from June/July 2020 mostly using mostly Google Meet being a free platform. Social media groups/classrooms were created on WhatsApp, Telegram, and Google Classroom.
The last two years have changed teaching-learning fundamentally as the education regulators are pushing for a purely online, blended/hybrid mode of education. A blended/hybrid mode of education means the possibility of students taking at least some of the courses/credits in purely online mode and those credits are made part of the minimum credit requirement for the eligibility of the degree. The regulations required for the same are being put in place nowadays. A unique mechanism of digital locker service where academic credentials/credits can be hosted at a centralized platform has been established by our regulator. In due course, the credits earned by all the students across all higher educational institutions and across all modes namely physical, online, distance mode, etc., will be reflected at the digital locker service. This could change the way higher education is regulated.
Online education could have a major impact in a country that has huge social, cultural, and economic disparity. The technology could be a big enabler for disadvantaged sections of society. It is interesting to discuss the impact of online/hybrid education and the teaching-learning process in a socially and culturally diversified environment.
