Online education is set to be the future provided it clears all the hurdles along its way: Abhishek, WeSchool

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.

In my opinion, the current COVID-19 pandemic outbreak will drastically change the education sector, in India as well as around the world. All the education institutes, governing bodies, and the governments will focus more on delivering online education without compromising on quality and effectiveness. Students, parents, education authorities would consider the online mode of learning more due to the overall convenience factor it offers.

Amidst the talks of online classrooms, keeping them for a prolonged period of time is not feasible due to the technological and psychological constraints it brings along with it. Still, there’s a sizeable population who vouches for the traditional classroom-based learning and this phenomenon would likely stay for another decade or so. Being in the digital era, colleges are bound to embrace the technological changes in the education sector without comprising on its overall quality. My college has always been open to all the latest technological changes in education hence, the lockdown hasn’t affected it drastically as such.

Online education is surely set to be the future and is sustainable provided it clears all the hurdles along its way such as the credibility, pricing, delay in the query response, poor/average Internet connectivity to name a few. With the help of governments, private institutes, apex education bodies, reducing these hurdles significantly is surely possible in the near future. Efforts are already being made since the last 4-5 years to overcome these challenges in India, and the significance of these efforts will increase all the more now due to this lockdown. Having said that, offline interventions are also required to facilitate it efficiently to all the stakeholders concerned i.e. students, teachers, instructors, government, society, etc.

In order to ensure that the online mode of education flourishes seamlessly across India in the near future, all its major challenges such as pricing, increased tie-ups of online education platforms with reputed institutes, poor Internet connectivity in the rural areas, etc. need to be addressed properly. The common perception among the Indians for positive learning is already positive, it just needs to be tapped properly.    

The feel of a physical classroom can be incorporated in online learning by ensuring real-time and an increased amount of availability of the professors; less time would be taken in query resolutions. Just as in a traditional classroom, the lectures could be made more interactive and discussions should be given more encouragement among the students and professors.

About the Author:

Abhishek Desai is currently pursuing Post Graduate Diploma in Management (PGDM) in e-Business from Welingkar Institute of Management. He has done his Summer Internship in the field of Market Research with 'TimesofMoney'. He's also served as 'Secretary of the Green Committee' at Welingkar.