Online education for school going students is quite unfeasible: Donika, DAIICT

These are first-hand student accounts on how our young population is managing to keep their exam prep or college course work going from the confines of their homes. In case you want to share your lockdown study experience, write to us at publish@shiksha.com.

The education sector has been one of the hardest-hit sectors due to the coronavirus outbreak. Distant education is the only solution for the millions of learners across the country and it’s been more than a month now that all the educational institutions have been closed. However, learning has not come to a complete halt. We have started online learning, conducting meetings on our laptops and working from our home.

Right now, we all have internet access and laptop handy but think about the long-term impact of this online scenario on learning. Everyone has different levels of access. This certainly is an emergency and most of us never anticipated it to stretch for so long. Hence, educational institutions did not get much time to research and prepare themselves leading to delay in the commencement of the new academic session. They had just started to explore technology-based alternatives to offer lessons.

The pandemic has affected the entire world. I am going to be talking about two kinds of people here. First, the school going kids and second about college/ university students.

On April 15, 2020, the Ministry of Home Affairs of GoI released a set of directives and guidelines w.r.t. lockdown and containment of COVID-19 in the country. One of these about the Education sector is that: all educational, training, coaching institutions, etc. shall remain closed till further notice.

Homeschooling is being followed in our country for a long time as an alternative to traditional in-classroom setting and this pandemic is a test to the possibility of the same.

We cannot ignore the fact that our country has a huge wi-fi gap and almost all the schools are behind the curriculum. Now, they need to cope up and the onus is upon the students.

At present, the most important thing is to train the faculty and staff as they should be able to move quickly online. Everyone including parents, children, and teachers needs to come together to make distant learning effective. Coronavirus would take a lot away from us but what we don’t want it to take away is our children’s education. We could not deny that the students are going to get a better education if they are at school getting face-to-face teaching which is not possible in the present pandemic situation.

The one thing that I have noticed about online learning is that the students are exploring more about a particular topic than they used to do earlier. For example, my brother is in Class 8 student and his school started virtual classes on Zoom meetings. It is difficult for the teachers to get a response from the students and instead of a two-way discussion, the class ends up being monotonous with the teacher explaining the concepts with a PowerPoint presentation.

To cover up this downfall, the teachers keep sending links to various websites that have animations and audios to explore the topic in depth. So, it is quite predictable that schools would not adapt to online teaching and the in-classroom learning will always be preferred. But the seed of hope in my mind would grow to imagine that the faculty will keep sending the links to external sources for in-depth learning the future too. Students need to have the ‘guru-shishya’ bonding which is quite difficult in virtual classrooms. School is a place to make friendships, learn and explore, decide what kind of person you want to be and it is a place which moulds your personality.

For many children, a school is a place of safety, worship and a place to get food. Digital learning is a solution to the problem we are facing right now, but it cannot be made permanent. The students need outdoor learning for their overall development. There are various non-educational challenges for the students too and a lot of decisions and strategies depend upon how long this goes.

For better learning experience for students, the teachers should choose a platform that allows a two-way discussion without disturbance issues.

The concept of notes making should not be diminished and could be replaced by giving digital assignments like making PowerPoint presentations and fun activities that could be performed at home. Education is not only about completing the syllabus but about expanding your knowledge. Coming to college and universities, my college was resilient and the authorities were determined to protect the interests of the students.

They immediately started taking decisions and tapped into the free resources available all over the internet so that we lose least. The course-specific instructions were sent remotely and we picked up the pace. However, the colleges are not likely to follow this mode of communication after the lockdown is lifted. Following are the principal reasons why my college would resist the same:

1. The colleges are meant to develop communication skills among students through various means such as project presentations, doubt sessions, etc. The richest communication channel is a face-to-face meeting or an in-personal oral presentation. No company or educational institution would give that up.
2. Not all have the required infrastructure and internet connectivity at their homes. The wi-fi gap in the country is huge. To continue distance learning, the government needs to provide this facility to each student. For a short period like the present, a smartphone might be enough but for a longer run, we need to consider serious issues like security.
3. Each individual would have to be equipped with one device but usually, in our homes, there is one per family. Many have siblings and the timing would clash. It would not be possible for authorities to set a fixed timetable that would be convenient for all the students and their families.
4. If the student has no parent or caretaker, who would look after their needs all the time.
5. Supervision of education is necessary and it is quite difficult to implement during online classes.The impact of lockdown varies from locality to locality and university to university. Considering poorer areas and government schools which do not have enough bandwidth and technology, it is difficult for them to cope up with the situation and keep the academic activities going on. For a country like India, going fully digital is nearly non-workable if the government does not fully support it.

However, it could be possible that companies (especially IT) might offer work from home to its employees depending upon the workload and personal situation of the employee. For college learning and companies, it might be easy to implement distant learning or work from home in the future too, online education for school going students is quite unfeasible. Technology would not replace but we can use it to enhance the learning experience in favour of children, students, and parents. “Education is the foundation upon which we build our future.”

About the Author:

Donika Juthani is pursuing BTech in ICT (Information and Communication Technology) from DAIICT. She is also an upcoming summer intern at Goldman Sachs. Donika is an ML (Machine Learning) enthusiast and skilled in Python, HTML, CSS, and MySQL. She is a member of the programming club at DAIICT and responsible for organizing SisCode, an initiative to motivate and guide female students in competitive programming.